While the benefits of adjustable monitors are hard to argue against, my concern has always been that it's just too easy to damage accidentally and too likely to eventually fail due to wear. But...I tend to keep and use my equipment for many years, so I try to make choices that support long life. If my plans were based on a two or three year expected life, my choices would be less conservative.

Note that this is based on my perception and on knowledge of the internal components and construction of today's SLRs. I don't know that these screens are in reality a significant point of failure, but the apparent risk is greater than my tolerance level.

LP

Good job with these fascinating photographs. Interesting that there is always one in each family that just has to follow his own drummer...

I remember taking a basic photography class at our local college way back in the days of film cameras. The second assignment was to use bracketed images of carefully metered gray cards and selected images followed by very carefully developing the film to determine if our irises were calibrated properly and our shutter speeds were correct.

It is far less likely that today's digital cameras have shutter speed errors, but I have seen lenses (especially lower cost ones) which may have been assembled incorrectly or have other internal faults resulting in consistently wrong exposure. Also...as lenses get older, the lubrication can get gummy, causing the auto-diaphragm not to work as fast as it should (or maybe not at all).

If you see that you are having consistent errors (usually less than one stop) in the same direction, I'd suggest that you first audit your metering process and technique. If that doesn't lead to the desired improvement, you can do a similar experiment to make sure that your body adn lens are really exposing for ISO 400 (or other setting) when you are set to that ISO.

LP

This is an excellent suggestion. Thanks. I've not yet opened up the front of the camera to see exactly what is involved to disassemble...I was planning to use the donor body to see what was required. I have downloaded the service manual, but even there it is not completely clear what is involved in disassembly and reassembly. My thinking is that if I can get the required parts and the repair turns out to be too daunting for me, I'll enlist the help of a local repair shop/ Hopefully they won't penalize me too much if I try first.

I have had the first version of this lens since shortly after it was introduced. It is a big, heavy lens, but generally pretty easy to manage. It did not replace any other lens, but just gave me added capability.

Here is my reasoning around your question: Most of us probably shoot somewhere in the middle of our lenses' capability most of the time, which means that the comments about speed not mattering most of the time are generally correct...most of the time. BUT...the difference between f6.3 and f2.8 is about two and a half stops. What this means for me is that when shooting in limited light in an unanticipated hand-held situation, if I open the aperture all the way, I can have a shutter 6 times faster than with the slower lens. A real example would be shooting at close to 1/200 second instead at 1/30. This is easily the difference between a sharp image and a blurred one at 200 mm.

And the lens is just superbly sharp and well-behaved.

As for DX vs, FX, you just have to decide what path to follow. I have long-term plans to add an FX camera in the future (primarily to add better wide-angle capability), so for me, it makes sense to buy FX lenses. They work perfectly on my DX bodies. It costs more now, but will avoid my having to immediately buy new lenses for the new body.

I am sure that if you decide to go ahead that you will be happy with the 70-200.

Larry

I recently traded for a Nikon D300 at a local used camera store, and I'm working to get it back in good shooting condition. At this point the project is going well, and the body works perfectly with modern lenses.

Unfortunately, the tab on the "Aperture Coupled Ring" that contacts older AF lenses to set meter sensitivity has either been broken or intentionally cut off. As a result, the body will not meter through those older lenses.

Since parts for this body are no longer available from Nikon, I am looking for either a dead D300 body from which I can cannibalize the necessary parts or else the parts themselves, if someone happens to have them stashed away. These are parts #405 and 406 on page A6 of the D300 Service Manual.

If you can help, please reply via Private Message with what you have and your price.

If I can't do this repair, the body will still work perfectly with new lenses, but my hope is to make it fully functional.

****UPDATE****

Thanks to all who looked. I found a junker body at a local camera store and have harvested the part that I need. After doing so, I have developed some concerns that the repair will require a bit more disassembly of my camera than I am comfortable undertaking. So I will likely contact this shop again and wee if they will be willing to do the replacement for me with the part that I have located.

Regards,

Larry

I recently purchased several new Compact Flash cards at Micro Center. They had several choices, fast and extremely fast, 16 GB and 32 GB. All were less than $35. I did not see that they of the smaller capacity cards in stock. Depending on the age of your camera, you may need to verify that the larger capacity cards will work on your camera. As an example, the Nikon D200 as originally delivered would handle only up to 4 GB, as I recall. A firmware update was required to handle the larger chips when they became available. I now can use both 16 GB and 32 GB cards in that camera. Most recent development seems to have been devoted to SD-family memory cards. And the manufacturing landscape is changing...some of the more recognizable manufacturers are no longer producing in the CF format, because it is becoming obsolete. This is interesting to me, because since CF is a parallel format, it is capable of being much faster than the serial architectures of SD cards. I guess that size is everything. at least sometimes.

I generally have used CF cards from reputable manufacturers, but have used a variety of brands, including Micro Center's "house brand" in a pinch with no problems.

It is extremely important to format any memory card before using it...don't just slide it into the camera and start clicking the shutter, even if it seems to work. An important part of the format process is identifying and mapping around any bad storage areas. I occasionally reformat my memory cards after moving all photographs off of them, just in case a few bits have failed.

The SD to CF adaptors are an intriguing idea. If you get one, you may want to try it out in a non-critical environment first, because the conversion that would be necessary could possibly slow the effective speed of the memory.

Good luck!

I had the same question, so looked it up. It is on the California/Nevada state line north of Death Valley. It is sort of halfway between Las Vegas and Sacramento.

These are very nice images.

Since photography equipment represents a major purchase for most of us, I think that gathering some guiding information before (and even while) shopping is a great idea. And since there are so many choices, the task can be daunting.

And it is interesting how the equipment landscape changes. Consider how many really good manufacturers and brands existed not too many years ago and are now history. Unfortunately, the explosion of multifunction devices which include the ability to take snapshots has decimated the market for low-end cameras. This has reduced revenue and concentrated overhead costs, making business more difficult for the manufacturers. Even Olympus could not support their photography line with their other businesses.

I volunteered for several years at the Dallas Arboretum as a docent and tour guide. At that time, I had just moved from Olympus OM film to Nikon digital, so I guess it was fairly natural that I kept an informal census of who shot what equipment. My discovery was that those folks (professional and hobbyist) who came to shoot people almost always used Canon equipment, while those who came to shoot trees and flowers were biased heavily toward Nikon. When I had the chance to visit with them, there was no real consensus around why they made their choice, but there was a lot of mention, especially from the Canon folks, that they liked the Canon sensor for portraiture. I have since heard that many of them like the Canon control layout. That is particularly interesting to me, because control layout is what sent me toward Nikon.

So I guess the bottom line is that there are differences between the makers and among the cameras that each makes. Camera and sensor development has resulted in the ability to 'adjust out' some of the performance differences that used to be a bigger deal.

My suggestion is to read the posts to get an idea of what camera and lens characteristics have proven important to those who post them, then be prepared to make your own comparison looking at those characteristics. In the end, your camera is going to become an extension of your hands, eyes, and brain. If any of us try to make that choice for you, at least some of us may end up being disappointed.

Good luck. And let the search be fun!

These are great photos taken in a difficult environment.

It's been awhile since I visited a cave with camera in hand, but I found that the multicolor lighting (as in the first photo) that cavern operators like to use can make photography difficult. Now that I have better low light capability and a camera with adjustable color saturation, I am looking forward to visiting some caverns to try my hand again. Peter Jones, a potter and cave photographer from New England, used to offer occasional classes and workshops at Carlsbad Caverns, but I've not seen notice of any of his sessions in quite some time. I would have loved to spend a day or more with him learning "how to do it" best.

The photo is of "Bizzy," so named because of the trouble that she got into while she was a kitten. Now she is our well-behaved social cat...always up for some interaction with the people around her, especially strangers. And she is a great model.

PM Sent on D300.

Thanks for the welcomes. I'm still working to get some interesting and "shareworthy" weather shots. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of my storm spotting assignments put me in locations that are visually not interesting when we have storms in the area. We'll hope that my luck changes.

Hi there. I am so happy to find this forum. Even though I am new to your group, I have been doing photography for many years, including 35mm and medium format film photography before reluctantly converting to digital media in 2006. My main interests have recently been railroad photography and industrial documentation, but as a storm spotter, my interest in weather photography is growing. I use Nikon equipment, and although it has been interesting to read and compare newer equipment, I am still using the D200 that I bought new in 2006 and a D300 "project camera" that I recently bought used and am in the process of refurbishing, along with a small stable of professional grade Nikkor lenses. Although I am in no way averse to technology or progress, my preference is for basic equipment that performs well and does not try to do multiple functions, which seems too often to lead to compromise, excess complexity, and premature failure.

While in the back yard taking some test images with the D300, I had a chance to take this image of one of our family cats. It was taken with the D300 and
70-200 f2.8 EDIF lens at 175 mm and f4.5 at 1/80 second. It was cropped in the camera, and represents about 25% of the original image. My preference is to crop when composing, but as mentioned, this project was testing camera functions.

(Download)

This is an interesting discussion Two things that help guide me are the knowledge that for many years after they converted to digital format, the beautifullly detailed images provided by NASA astronauts were produced using 6 MP Kodak digital cameras. Also keep in mind that there is a tradeoff between resolution and dynamic range for a particular sensor size, which is one of the big benefits of FX (full frame) sensors over DX crop sensors. Technology improvements have helped this somewhat, but not eliminated it. That said, it is a truth of life that significant cropping after exposure has the same effect as using a smaller sensor.