D50 w/o DOF...work around?

Hi all,
The D50 fits my skill level, budget, and hands pretty well, and I am all
set to spend some $ - but I as I am interested in photography as art, I
suspect I might miss the DOF preview. So, what are my work around
options, other then the D70s? Does the LCD help? Can I buy a primary
lens with an aperture ring and stop-down myself? or ??

Thanks,
Tom

Tom (was aName) wrote:
Hi all,
The D50 fits my skill level, budget, and hands pretty well, and I am all
set to spend some $ - but I as I am interested in photography as art, I
suspect I might miss the DOF preview. So, what are my work around
options, other then the D70s? Does the LCD help? Can I buy a primary
lens with an aperture ring and stop-down myself? or ??

Thanks,
Tom

Set the aperture, take a test photo and then view it to see it you have
too much, too little or the right amount of DOF. The preview gets
pretty dark with higher f-numbers anyway.

Scott

Tom (was aName) wrote:

...I as I am interested in photography as art, I
suspect I might miss the DOF preview.

I seldom use mine on a D70, as mentioned it gets dark so hard to see
anyways.

So, what are my work around
options, other then the D70s? Does the LCD help?

The LCD is good for evaluating the look and size of out of focus circles
in the background but not so good for evaluating sharpness on a D70 it
doesn't go to full zoom.

Can I buy a primary
lens with an aperture ring and stop-down myself? or ??

No this won't work. Only very ancient lenses work that way & those would
need some kind of adapter and wouldn't meter. Modern lenses only stop
down at the moment of taking the exposure and a microchip is needed to
tell the camera what the range of the aperture is for calculating metering.

If you have the luxury of tethering a laptop to the camera with Nikon's
$100 Capture software, that's an extraordinary way to see how your
images are coming out. I have an old tripod and I put some brackets on
it for holding a laptop, mostly for doing time lapse movies but it's
really amazing how much more you can see of the image full size. You can
control all the camera's settings from the computer, experimenting for
just the right effect. If nothing else this is a great way to learn.

--
Paul Furman
http://www.edgehill.net/1
Bay Natives
http://www.baynatives.com

(Top quoting :-O) ... Thanks both for your information...I'll take DOF
preview off my "Please-NO-regrets" list and I like the notion of using
the "laptop-viewfinder" for learning and near real time tweaking.

- Tom


Paul Furman wrote:

Tom (was aName) wrote:

...I as I am interested in photography as art, I suspect I might miss
the DOF preview.

I seldom use mine on a D70, as mentioned it gets dark so hard to see
anyways.

So, what are my work around options, other then the D70s? Does the
LCD help?

The LCD is good for evaluating the look and size of out of focus
circles in the background but not so good for evaluating sharpness on
a D70 it doesn't go to full zoom.

Can I buy a primary lens with an aperture ring and stop-down myself?
or ??

No this won't work. Only very ancient lenses work that way & those
would need some kind of adapter and wouldn't meter. Modern lenses only
stop down at the moment of taking the exposure and a microchip is
needed to tell the camera what the range of the aperture is for
calculating metering.

Yep, that was my guess, having read enough to suspect, but without
experience to know what I might be missing.

If you have the luxury of tethering a laptop to the camera with
Nikon's $100 Capture software, that's an extraordinary way to see how
your images are coming out. I have an old tripod and I put some
brackets on it for holding a laptop, mostly for doing time lapse
movies but it's really amazing how much more you can see of the image
full size. You can control all the camera's settings from the
computer, experimenting for just the right effect. If nothing else
this is a great way to learn.