Depends on whether you're doing a portrait to show her mother…or a nude/bourdoir shot. Both are nicely done…which one is "better" depends on your/her aims for the shot and/or the intended purposes for which it's being done.

I've discovered that LR's exposure using the Auto button is too much although color, contrast and the other adjustments seem pretty good to me. I usually hit Auto then drag the exposure back down from the typical +1.25 to +1.5 that LR adds to about 0 to +a little bit. Other sliders get adjusted sometimes but not too often. I don't bring images in through ACR and rarely use PS for editing unless I need to do something that LR doesn't do.

So…does the original EN-EL15 work in a D7500? I'm upgrading soon from my 7100…and have a couple of extra 15s. While I'll obviously get a 15A with the new camera it would be better not to have to upgrade my spare batteries. I can handle fewer shots with the 15 since they're only backups anyway.

I’m considering this as well for my upcoming D7500 purchase…although my current first choice is the Nikon 18-300. Has anybody tried both?

I have the 18-200 on a 7100 and it's my main 95% of all my shots lens. Really great. I'm going to upgrade to the 18-300 (the new lighter one albeit a bit slower) this winter and give the old one to my spouse. All the reviews I've seen on the lighter/newer 18-300 give it great marks just like the 18-200…and I've been very satisfied with the latter.
It's not as light as the shorter zooms…but if you want to do birds you really need the longer reach…otherwise the bird is so small in the frame that when you crop in you lose the details.

Thanks…I'll do that. I did some more testing today and in manual focus with the 18-200 on both my 7100 and 7000 body the focus indicator works as expected but in auto it still hunts. My Sigma 50-500 at 200 focuses and stops focusing as expected. Looking at photos of a Cooper Mini logo about 200 feet away at 200mm on both lenses…sharpness is equivalent so it isn't that the lens won't focus…it just won't auto focus worth a darn at 200…but it does at shorter lengths and gradually gets worse as I zoom to the high end.

So…since other lenses at the same focal length on both bodies autofocus just fine…I'm about 98% convinced it's the 18-200 just showing it's age. I'll see what a repair costs once we get back to FL for the winter and then make a decision.

Thanks all for your suggestions and help.

The only real drawback…as I see it…is a warranty. If the grey market lenses he sells are warrantable through Nikon then that's certainly worth it for the 180 savings.

I tried the online quote thing and got a "have to send in for estimate, unable to calculate one" notice. Might have to just send it in in November when we get the RV back to FL for the winter, the worst I'll have lost is 2x shipping cost and that can't be more than $40 or so.

Thanks…mine is mostly at the longer focal lengths as well so maybe it's time to replace. Of course…focus at shorter focal lengths is a lot easier for the lens to do anyway.

You're right…AF-S is better for static subjects but since I do a lot of mixed wildlife and landscape photos I've always found that AF-C using BBF works more quickly for me since I don't have to keep switching modes…Mr. Murphy can almost guarantee that on a walk through the woods you'll have it set to the wrong option…although if it's on AF-C for quick bird/animal shots switching over to AF-S for the landscape is easy…as long as you switch it back to C when you're done for the inevitable quick shot.

I've played with a1 and a2 and have settled this summer for having them set to release instead due to the focus hunt issues…might go back to focus when I get this issue resolved but for now I would miss too many shots due to "I don't think I'm in focus in the body". Part of the problem is that on the road it's hard to get anything fixed…not that there are any camera stores in most of the small town we travel through in the RV anyway…and by the time it goes off to Nikon who has to fix it anyway probably and comes back we've moved on. I likely won't get this fixed until after November 1 when we'll be stable for awhile…although we'll be in Denver in a couple of weeks and I am going to look there…and the other places we are in the meantime…for a store with an 18-200 in stock and see if they'll let me mount it on my body and verify that it's a lens problem and not a body problem…I think it's the lens but before either fixing or replacing it would like to verify…it's that 20 years worth Navy training.

I'm a bit leery of eBay…did a quick search there and limited it to just the lens…prices for the VRII range from 40 to 489 (latter for new…but with the number of bad apples I've heard about on eBay I'm hesitant to go that way even if it saves me a bit of cash. The 489 one is cheaper than new from B&H, Amazon, or more mainstream dealers…but without knowing more about the seller pixelhub it's hard to know who's reputable and who's not…he does have 10,000 positive ratings in the last year and been on eBay since 2011…so he's likely one of the reputable ones…but ya never know.

Good idea…but nope, VR has no effect. Tried on/off and in both normal and active…nothing different about the issue in any VR setting.

Thanks Bill. Went out today after we parked the RV and did a little testing…AF-C with single point selected. At low to mid zooms the hunting is much less pronounced. At 200mm and about 8 or 10 feet range I focused on the vertical edge of a white label about 2x3 inches with red printing on it on the side of our RV which is medium brown so plenty of contrast with the label which was in full sunlight…body was resting on a picnic table. Autofocus would not settle in…it did the same as before…got almost right, hunted back and forth a couple times, went to minimum focus, back to almost right, hunted a couple times, and repeat.

Shifted to manual focus and put the vertical white edge in the middle of the central focusing square…also tried with offsetting to the side a bit say 1/4 and 3/4 of the way across the square…and also tried other focusing points as well…all with same results.

Focused manually and to my eye it looks fine but getting it to settle in completely on the round dot for 'focused' was hard…with no focus ring movement I got some shifting back and forth between the left arrow, right arrow, both arrows, the dot, all 3 and various combinations.

So…it looks like it's focusing just fine manually and my guess is that slight shifting of the focus indicators in manual is due to very slight camera movement as it was being braced on a table and not completely fixed in place on a tripod.

Does that sound like it's likely the focus motor to you? If so…any idea what the repair cost by Nikon is? My guess is that with 2 way shipping it is very likely to be $250 at least although that's based on no firsthand knowledge of Nikon's repair costs. A new lens from B&H is about $650 and this is far and away my most commonly used lens…at least 80% of my shots.

Saw the recommendation on looking on eBay…and while I have nothing against them it's hard to really know the reputability of an individual seller or if a used lens is going to have the same issue…which if it is the focus motor is likely just wear due to usage for the past 6 years and somewhere between 40K and 50K shots. Might just be that the old one is wore out and needs replacing.

Oops…noticed I put 7200 in the post subject…it's actually a 7100.

Hi folks…I've been running the above combination for probably 4 or 5 years now and recently I noticed that this combination (my normal walking around configuration as we're full time travelers although I have wide and long telephoto Sigma zooms as well) is hunting around the correct focus point instead of homing in and stopping…occasionally instead of hunting it goes to minimum focus distance then back to almost correct and then hunts back and forth.

I use BBF on the body and almost always have focus set to AF-C and d9 or d21…although I've tried all the other combinations and they make no difference.

The Sigma wide angle doesn't do it at all…but then it's a wide zoom so I wouldn't expect it to. The Sigma 50-500 works as it always has…although it does sometimes hunt a bit in low light…and it's always had issues with birds in flight against the sky at long focal lengths without helping it with some initial manual focus.

I've cleaned the lens, cleaned (blew out with air) the autofocus sensors under the mirror, cleaned the contacts on both lens and body and only got a little improvement…most of that came when I did the autofocus sensors.

What else can I try…I don't have any idea how to clean the autofocus sensors other than with air. I've been told that the lens needs to go back to Nikon for adjusting…but don't really understand how a mechanical adjustment would help solve the problem as it focuses fine manually.

Any other ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Plain old ice and water will cool it just as well…my guess is that you can't actually tell the difference. It is true that salt water freezes at a lower temperature…but it's 28 degrees instead of 32. The actual water in the cooler can't be any colder than 32 degrees which is the temp the ice from the freezer melts…actually it can be a little less as the actual ice internal temp is probably less than 32 when you take it out of the freezer. In any event…assume that the water temp in the fresh/ice cooler is 32 and the temp in the saltwater/ice cooler is 28. The beer starts at say 80 degrees or whatever room temp and the rate of chilling is determined by the difference in temp between the beer and the water…the fresh water has a delta of 48 and the salt water a delta of 52…this is a 7.5% difference which means the time to get the beer to it's final temp will be about 7.5% less…assuming the salt took 5 minutes then the fresh would take 5 minutes and 22 seconds. Big deal. I question the entire premise that it will be cold enough in 5 minutes anyway…it will be cooler than the 80 it started at in 5 minutes but if it's much below about 60 I would be surprised…the heat transfer coefficient h just isn't high enough for an aluminum (or glass) to water transfer. I wouldn't drink my beer at 60…or even if I'm way off and it's actually 50 in 5 minutes. Cool enough to drink in an emergency…but the engineer who thought ahead woulda chilled his beer yesterday:-)