Lens recommendations?

According to Paul Furman :
Ed Ruf (REPLY to E-MAIL IN SIG!) wrote:

[ ... ]

Yeah I'm looking at a 35mm f/2 for $130 now instead of an $800 35mm f/1.4

O.K. Is the 35mm f/2 chipped or not?

Don't forget you can always use the compressed NEF format if you
find yourself in a place with limited storage.

I just did that an hour ago. CS2 is going to cost $600 though so I
haven't even fiddled with the RAW files yet.

Or -- there is "the GIMP" which is *free*, used in combination
with dcraw or one of the other programs derived from it. Those are
targeted at unix systems, but have been ported to Windows as well. (And
a Mac with OS-X has unix hiding under the Mac GUI, so these programs are
already ready for OS-X. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.
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DoN. Nichols wrote:

Paul Furman :

Yeah I'm looking at a 35mm f/2 for $130 now instead of an $800 35mm f/1.4

O.K. Is the 35mm f/2 chipped or not?

Unchipped, and that's just fine on the D200. It appears to be damn near
as good as the 1.4, maybe better in some respects, a little more compact
and is reasonably priced because it doesn't meter on a D70 or D50 and
they were in production for a long time. No multicoating on these older
ones though.

DoN. Nichols wrote:

According to Ed Ruf (REPLY to E-MAIL IN SIG!) :

Don't forget you can always use the compressed NEF format if you
find yourself in a place with limited storage.


That is another possible benefit to attract me to the D200.

D70 is compressed, the feature of the D200 is uncompressed if you've got
room for them. I think you knew that but others might be confused.

There are a bunch of nice little things like you can see the ISO setting
in the viewfinder (set auto ISO to min shutter speed: better grainy than
blurry), the shutter is quieter, burst shooting is amazing, I think the
AF is supposed to be better, the LCD on the back is bigger & you can
zoom all the way in to check sharpness, it has a few custom modes you
can use for special conditions to hold any desired combination of
settings, more knobs for useful settings including a customizable
function button, the dial for shooting mode locks so it doesn't change
every time I pull it out of the bag as well as a metal body, rubber
grips & ISO 100-'3200'. A complete list of upgraded features from a D70
would be a long list. I've got lots of reading on the manual to do.

According to Paul Furman :
DoN. Nichols wrote:

According to Ed Ruf (REPLY to E-MAIL IN SIG!) :

Don't forget you can always use the compressed NEF format if you
find yourself in a place with limited storage.


That is another possible benefit to attract me to the D200.

D70 is compressed, the feature of the D200 is uncompressed if you've got
room for them. I think you knew that but others might be confused.

I would have realized that if I had stopped to think, because
with a true uncompressed RAW, all images would come out the same size,
while with the compression, I see differing image sizes depending on how
much detail is present -- as was particularly obvious with the fireworks
shots taken last 4th of July. Lots of black sky, with varying amounts
of fire trails resulting in varying sizes of image files.

There are a bunch of nice little things like you can see the ISO setting
in the viewfinder

Nice!

(set auto ISO to min shutter speed: better grainy than
blurry),

Agreed.

the shutter is quieter, burst shooting is amazing, I think the
AF is supposed to be better,

I wonder it it is as fast with the mechanical autofocus
(screwdriver in lens mount ring on body) as it was on the N90s bodies
which I have with the NC2000e/c digital backs from Kodak for the AP? I
certainly notice a difference in speed between the two.

the LCD on the back is bigger & you can
zoom all the way in to check sharpness,

*That* is nice!

it has a few custom modes you
can use for special conditions to hold any desired combination of
settings, more knobs for useful settings including a customizable
function button,

Hmmm ... customizable to perhaps allow me to select between two
AI lenses for setting the metering mode more quickly?

the dial for shooting mode locks so it doesn't change
every time I pull it out of the bag

My D70 one changes every so often just hanging on a strap,
depending on what it brushes against. I noticed that when looking over
the demo in the local store.

as well as a metal body, rubber
grips & ISO 100-'3200'.

How noisy is the 3200 ISO? I find the D70 to have rather
reasonable noise levels at 1600 ISO (compared to the grain in film
pushed to the same speed).

A complete list of upgraded features from a D70
would be a long list. I've got lots of reading on the manual to do.

I've got the downloaded manual (non-printing form, since I don't
have a serial number yet), and will spend more time digging through it
to see what else to expect.

Thanks,
DoN.

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DoN. Nichols wrote:

a customizable function button,

Hmmm ... customizable to perhaps allow me to select between two
AI lenses for setting the metering mode more quickly?

On the D2x, you can set the "func" button to do exactly that, so I would
imagine the D200's can as well. It remembers some number of non-CPU
lenses (not sure how many, but more than I have) by focal length.

--
Jeremy |

According to Jeremy Nixon :
DoN. Nichols wrote:

a customizable function button,

Hmmm ... customizable to perhaps allow me to select between two
AI lenses for setting the metering mode more quickly?

On the D2x, you can set the "func" button to do exactly that, so I would
imagine the D200's can as well. It remembers some number of non-CPU
lenses (not sure how many, but more than I have) by focal length.

This is excellent news, and just what I was hoping to discover.

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Jeremy Nixon wrote:

DoN. Nichols wrote:

a customizable function button,

Hmmm ... customizable to perhaps allow me to select between two
AI lenses for setting the metering mode more quickly?

On the D2x, you can set the "func" button to do exactly that, so I would
imagine the D200's can as well.

As I understand the custom modes can hold any combo of all the settings.
The Func button can control about a dozen different things so maybe even
the func button could control different things for different modes.

DoN. Nichols wrote:

According to Paul Furman :

DoN. Nichols wrote:

There are a bunch of nice little things like you can see the ISO setting
in the viewfinder

Nice!

Yeah & it blinks when activated above 100.


(set auto ISO to min shutter speed: better grainy than blurry),

Agreed.

the dial for shooting mode locks

Um, actually it's a button used with the command dial, only AS& P modes.
Took me a while to find that.

How noisy is the 3200 ISO? I find the D70 to have rather
reasonable noise levels at 1600 ISO (compared to the grain in film
pushed to the same speed).

Hopefully my D70 can be repaired & I'll do a comparison. I did a little
test in a dark room & the grain looked awful at full zoom in the LCD but
the 1600 shot was badly blurred so I'd still find it useful as I'm not
fond of tripods.

I don't think this example is legitimate:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=18301397

Ed Ruf (REPLY to E-MAIL IN SIG!) wrote:

Note that anything over 1600 is just pushed using greater amplification. So
you take the noise at 1600 and amplify that with the signal as well.

Correct, and it's not even given a number above 1600 [H0.3, H0.7, H1]
and those can't be used in auto ISO so maybe that'll be one of my custom
modes.


I've got the downloaded manual (non-printing form, since I don't
have a serial number yet)

It comes with a printed manual.

"Jeremy Nixon" wrote:

Marc Sabatella wrote:

That's a bit misleading. There are plety of situations where I might
use manual focus even though AF would be functional.

I said "forced" to use it, not "choose" to use it.

True enough. I was responding more to what someone *might* have
erroneously inferred from your comment: that the only time you'd use MF
is when forced to (and thus leading to the erroneous conclusion that the
focus indicator feature is useless as an aid to manual focusing).
"Misleading" is too strong a word, though, I'd agree - your statement
was accurate.

So I find this feature quite
useful.

So do I. But it's not even close to a replacement for a decent
focusing
screen.

Oh, absolutely agreed. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Just that the
focus indication feature *is* useful, when available in MF mode.

---------------
Marc Sabatella


Music, art, & educational materials
Featuring "A Jazz Improvisation Primer"
http://www.outsideshore.com/

Ed Ruf (REPLY to E-MAIL IN SIG!) wrote:

See pp 93-95 of the manual for telling the body f.l. and max aperture. If
you use a zoom, you need to set the proper values for the specific shot. if
you don't need accurate f.l. that's one thing, but with a non-constant max
aperture, you need to change that as you zoom for metering to work
properly.

Metering should still work fine, but the camera and EXIF info will report
the wrong aperture. I don't have any variable-aperture lenses, but I can't
think of a reason why they would be special in this regard, since the amount
of light coming to the meter will change when zooming.

I just tried this: mounted a 50mm f/1.2 on my camera, but told the camera
it was an f/4 lens. Metering worked fine, it just reported f/4 when the
lens was set for f/1.2. Same if I claimed it was f/5.6; no change in the
actual exposure.

Technically, the meter doesn't need to know the aperture to get a correct
light reading. But the camera expects to know it to report it and store
it in the EXIF information. All the camera needs to know is how far you
have stopped down from maximum, which it knows with or without the correct
aperture information.

--
Jeremy |