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I was playing with mucking around with Program (P) mode recently - I figured since I paid for it so I might as well use it once . I found a bit of a quirk, if you scroll off the end of the list of feasible exposures and keep turning the dial it remembers how far you have gone. You have to scroll all the way back before your exposure changes again. Turning off the camera clears the bug too. I guess Nikon engineers and testers don't use Program mode either .

Actually that's quite interesting. The work-experience kid must have been tasked to programme that function

D70 does this too.

I assume it changes it in its own mind even if the lens isn't capable, but stops the physical change at the limit of the lens.
Must be how they cope with lenses of greater capability.
But I like you am sure it could be fixed with a programming correction.

I found a quirk -

Sometimes I mistakenly change the focus area. When you are in manual focus, you can't change this, fair enough (by holding AE/AF-L and direction pad). But then after trying in manual then switch back to AF-S, it wouldn't change either. turning the camera off and on fixed it.

xorl wrote:I was playing with mucking around with Program (P) mode recently - I figured since I paid for it so I might as well use it once . I found a bit of a quirk, if you scroll off the end of the list of feasible exposures and keep turning the dial it remembers how far you have gone. You have to scroll all the way back before your exposure changes again. Turning off the camera clears the bug too. I guess Nikon engineers and testers don't use Program mode either .

It's not a bug, it'a feature

Teh D2H does it, too, and I'd presume other Nikon SLRs as well. The idea is that you tell the camera what to adjust first (shutter speed or aperture) when the light changes.

For example, assume you've got an f/2.8 lens. You turn the wheel in P* mode until you hit f/2.8 and it won't go any further. Let's say you stopped turning the wheel right there. Now increase the light that's hitting the lens. The f-stop will go up again.

Now, let's assume you "overclicked" the f/2.8 stop 6 times (and let's also assume that one click on the wheel has been set to mean 1/3 stop). If you increase the light hitting the lens, you'll notice that the camera will stick to f/2.8 (lowering the shutter speed instead) until you're 2 EV over the light you had initially. Only when you increase the light to more than 2 EV over what you previously had, the camera will crank up the f-stop.

Different bodies may do the exact numbers differently, but in general, that's the intention behind remembering overclicks.

Cheers
Steffen.

As Steffen's comprehensive explaination shows, nothing gets overlooked by Nikon engineers.

Interesting.. It looks like there is a limit to how far you can deviate from the program, beyond that it ignores further clicks - which makes sense.