D300 Users - any problems?

[ATJ]

I have seen a small number of reports of problems from the US with the D300 and was wondering how the folks here are fairing with theirs.

There has been:
* Dead battery - battery just dies even though it appears to be charged
* Some focusing issues - I have seen some reports of images not being sharp. This could be user error, though.
* Sometimes the camera refuses to shoot. This may be dirty lens contacts.

[gstark]

* Dead battery - battery just dies even though it appears to be charged

I've not heard of this at all.

* Some focusing issues - I have seen some reports of images not being sharp. This could be user error, though.

I suspect so, but ....

I have also seen some anomalies, that relate to the use of the non-central focus point in conjunction with matrix metering.

And in some shots that I did on Monday last, I could see what I believed were instances of this exact issue, and images shot using spot metering were way sharper than similar images shot moments earlier, from the same spot and under the same conditions, using matrix metering.

We have just performed some quick tests of this, using 2 different D300 bodies - the images are moving to the Mac as I write this - and I'll evaluate them in a few minutes.

Stay tooned.

* Sometimes the camera refuses to shoot. This may be dirty lens contacts.

Or it may be that camera doesn't believe it has acquired focus. In shooting the aforementioned tests, I noted that the camera looked like it had acquired focus, but the green spot was flashing as I was trying to release the shutter. While I've not yet read the <strike>encylopeadia</strike> manual, I am presuming that this means that focus was not acquired.

As I said, stay tooned.

[marc]

Hi Andrew

My main issue with the D300 has been the slow write/buffer time, using 6.5 fps (especially compared to my D2Xs). It has frozen on me once.
I'm waiting on the purchase of a new 300X Lexar CF card + MB-D10 grip (from Poon) to see if that helps the situation.

Cheers
Marc

[gstark]

Marc,

I don't think it's so much that it's slow, but there's a lot of data to be written.

What cards are using ATM? This certainly seems to look like a camera that can benefit from fast cards; I've seen a delay in shutting down the cam because it was still writing data, but, as I said, I see that as a card issue, rather than one that's camera centric.

Also, and FYI, be careful with the Lexars: we have seen some serious issues with Lexar reliability, that we've not seen with Sandisk.

Cheers.

[ATJ]

Gary,

Here are a couple of threads:

http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB2/view ... p?t=118762
http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB2/view ... p?t=119118

And there are some on DPR (but they can be a pain to read through all the crap).

[marc]

Marc,

I don't think it's so much that it's slow, but there's a lot of data to be written.

What cards are using ATM? This certainly seems to look like a camera that can benefit from fast cards;

Also, and FYI, be careful with the Lexars: we have seen some serious issues with Lexar reliability, that we've not seen with Sandisk.

Cheers.

Hi Gary

I was using a Sandisk Extreme III 4 GB. Let's hope it is just a card issue.
Although now you have me worried about the Lexar

[gstark]

Gary,

Here are a couple of threads:

Yes, there's a lot of crap in the DPR threads. Nothing really conclusive in the threads you're pointing to either.

Let's go through what I've just done. First of all, let me declare my prejudices: I believe that most times when people see focus issues - including backfocus - I tend to believe that it's a user error.

Similarly, when I see images of mine that I believe to be soft, my first thought is the same: user error. It's a problem with technique, and in that instance, that would be my technique.

I started by setting up the light tent and tripod. I've used a typical backfocus chart for this, if only to have a somewhat controlled - but contrived - target for the focusing.

Not wanting to stand too much on ceremony, things were set up to inexact tolerances - near enough being good enough. When, in doing a real shoot with a DSLR, does one accurately measure angles, distances, etc? Sure, using a LF camera and wanting to take account of Scheimpflug, you probably would. I'm not, and I didn't.

The main thing I was trying to determine was if there is an issue in focusing when comparing shooting using matrix metering, vs spot metering, because that is where I have heard of issues, and that is where I believe I may have even seen some issues.

So ... the main thing was to shoot a couple of pairs of similar images: 50mm f/1.4 @ f/1.4, matrix, centre focus position vs spot, centre focus position, and matrix, off-centre focus position vs spot, off-centre focus postion.

My expectation was that the critical images would be these lattermost ones, and they're the ones that you see here.

50mm f/1.4 @ f/1.4 matrix, off-centre focus position





50mm f/1.4 @ f/1.4 spot, off-centre focus position



In pixel peeping at these two images, there seems to be no real difference. A very slight difference in terms of the actual point of focus, but that can be easily put down to the manner of the tests I performed.

Certainly, the differences were not of the order of a failure to acquire focus, or focusing in the entirely wrong location, which is what I was anticipating, based upon what I'd been seeing thus far.

The differences I'm talking about amount to mere millimetres in terms of where the actual focus points fell. That does not, to me, display any evidence of any focusing issues.

So, I needed to revisit what I saw on Monday last. Here's two images from that session ...






The second of these images is markedly sharper. It's shot using spot metering, the former was sot using matrix metering, and these are adjacent images from the night. FYI, focus point on the first was on the lady to our left (Rinske), on the second it was on Freddy, the trumpet player to our right.

Looking more critically at the images (compared with when I'm actually shooting at a jam) we can also see that there's a significant variation in the exposure settings applied to the image. This is expected, based upon the conditions and changes I made.

Note too that Freddy's hat is blown in the first; the second image seems better exposed to me, suggesting that matrix still cannot cope too well with this sort situation.

What I failed to take into consideration last Monday was what the actual changes were: I accepted that changes would apply, but i didn't think about them, about what was actually changing. Silly me!

Both images were shot through the 85 f/1.4 @ f/2.8, -1.3 EV. To get the different exposures then, the shutter speeds must, obviously, be different.

1/40 in the first, 1/320 in the second!

And with that sort of shutter speed in the first image, I am exposing my images to the risk of camera movement and/or subject movement. In this instance, both.

At which point any discussion of problems with the focusing mechanism of the camera becomes moot: all bets are off.

Looking closely at the first of these images, I can see evidence of movement within the image, and any problem here, clearly lies with the user.

So, from my perspective, I am satisfied that there are no focusing issues of a generic nature with the D300 - as I mentioned earlier, we did this test using two different bodies (Leigh has an eval unit from Nikon Oz right now) and they both behaved consistently with the backfocus chart.

That takes care of the focus issues, AFAIC.

Let's return now to the metering: I've mentioned in other threads that matrix metering seems greatly improved on the D300 when compared with other models I've played with. I still hold this view, but it's still evident to me, and for many of the images that I may be shooting, that I will still need to use spot metering mode.

The extent of the blackness in these two images seems to me to have affected the metering. This is an expected outcome, btw: there's a lot of dark areas and high contrast when you're shooting most types of stage scenes, and from what I'm seeing here, the metering system is trying to accommodate and compensate for the dark areas, rather than accepting that they need to be dark, and thus discount them from the metering calculations.

Hence, spot metering is, for me, still the way to go.

Finally, and back to focusing, this camera's focusing still impresses me. Ok, it's not even been two weeks, but it focuses bloody fast, much moreso than the D200, and the D70 isn't even in the same game.

And I note in one of the threads a comment about the camera "not focusing" at all ... from what I'm seeing, the camera already seems to be in focus at that distance, and the issue is more that the camera doesn;t need to refocus itself if it has determined that the subject is already in focus. A quick insertion of some interference into the sight path confirms that the focus mechanisms have not fallen asleep, so it's simply a matter of the camera determining no need to fix what isn't broken, so to speak.

That about sums up what I've done with this today: nefs are big - 10-12MB each - and live beside the jpgs that you see; just substitute NEF for JPG in the filename to grab them, noting that the extensions are all uppercase.

And returning to me previously declared prejudices ... they remain unscathed.


HTH; cheers.

[chrisk]

i know this is probably stating the bleeding obvious but in cont shooting mode the cam takes the pic even when it hasn't acquired perfect focus. you can review when focus is aquired by chimpng and looking for teh red confirmation focus point. i noticed in alot of shots don;t have a focus point acquired and are softer than one would like.

i also note that in both neutral and standard modes there is next to in cam sharpening. this can be adjusted but the differences in "out of the cam" sharpness, (and colour/ contrast for that matter), are noticebaly different when adjusting the settings in cam. personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

[ATJ]

Finally, and back to focusing, this camera's focusing still impresses me. Ok, it's not even been two weeks, but it focuses bloody fast, much moreso than the D200, and the D70 isn't even in the same game.

And this is the part that excites me. Not that my D70 is all that slow but something that is significantly faster would be handy. I shoot a lot of macro hand held and so any movement by me can mean I lose focus. Having it focus more quickly may mean I get more keepers.

[ATJ]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

[gstark]

Finally, and back to focusing, this camera's focusing still impresses me. Ok, it's not even been two weeks, but it focuses bloody fast, much moreso than the D200, and the D70 isn't even in the same game.

And this is the part that excites me. Not that my D70 is all that slow but something that is significantly faster would be handy. I shoot a lot of macro hand held and so any movement by me can mean I lose focus. Having it focus more quickly may mean I get more keepers.

Yes, and this is especially noticeable with, for instance, the 80-400VR. I'll try to remember to pack this lens for tonight so that others may have a play, but yes, this is an exciting part of the new body.

[gstark]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

I actually work a slightly different way. I'm always shooting in raw + jpg, and I start with settings from the spreadsheet. That way, I can, with the correct in-camera settings applied, reduce my post to basically resize only from the jpg.

I always have the raw available for Andy, but my goal is get it right in the camera, lazy grumpy old man that I am.

[ATJ]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

I actually work a slightly different way. I'm always shooting in raw + jpg, and I start with settings from the spreadsheet. That way, I can, with the correct in-camera settings applied, reduce my post to basically resize only from the jpg.

I always have the raw available for Andy, but my goal is get it right in the camera, lazy grumpy old man that I am.

I can understand that way of working, but I don't apply the same processing to every image so it might increase my workload to undo and then redo. Maybe I should look at what I do most of the time and put that into the camera knowing I can undo it if I want to do it differently for an image.

[chrisk]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

hmm...no i believe they are, cos the RAW images turn out very differently depending on the settings you pick when you upload onto PC so they must be applied to the raw image str8 out of camera. you can undo them of course in a "non destructive" way, but the raw image is processed with the sharpness/ colour settings you pick. the default is very neutral in colour and has little-zero sharpening.

RE: macro and AF. the speed is good for macro but far more useful to you will be the 51pts. the flexibility you have to perfectly select your focal point for macro is absoluetly brilliant.

i found the exact same thing with the d80. little sharpening is applied in camera at default settings.

[ATJ]

hmm...no i believe they are, cos the RAW images turn out very differently depending on the settings you pick when you upload onto PC so they must be applied to the raw image str8 out of camera. you can undo them of course in a "non destructive" way, but the raw image is processed with the sharpness/ colour settings you pick. the default is very neutral in colour and has little-zero sharpening.

That's because the settings are stored in the raw and the raw processor applies those settings by default. The raw image should indeed be raw - directly from the sensor.

RE: macro and AF. the speed is good for macro but far more useful to you will be the 51pts. the flexibility you have to perfectly select your focal point for macro is absoluetly brilliant.

That is another thing I am looking forward to. With only 5 points on the D70 I can't actually put the focus point on the intersection of the thirds.

[gstark]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

I actually work a slightly different way. I'm always shooting in raw + jpg, and I start with settings from the spreadsheet. That way, I can, with the correct in-camera settings applied, reduce my post to basically resize only from the jpg.

I always have the raw available for Andy, but my goal is get it right in the camera, lazy grumpy old man that I am.

I can understand that way of working, but I don't apply the same processing to every image so it might increase my workload to undo and then redo.

As you correctly note (but perhaps not obviously observe ) you may not be applying the same processing to each image.

This of course comes back to an analysis of what and how you shoot.

In my case, I may do a lot of shooting in a dark bar, or at the motor racing, or ....

The where is unimportant: what is important is that I will frequently be shooting a number of shots under a given set of conditions. And those conditions will be unlikely to change over the short term, and thus I can generally rely upon applying a common set of baseline parameters to those images, safe in the knowledge that those values may be applied whistever the given conditions remain constant.

Let's put that drivel into a more practical sense. Or two.

Car racing. You're trackside. Sunny day. You can set your WB for Sunny (-1 in my case). Exposure ... take a couple of sample shots and chimp your histogram. note the various exposure settings and choose one. Switch the camera to manual, and apply the settings.

Note that both your wb and exposure, if left to their own devices, will vary from image to image, because something as simple as the colour of one car vs another, or the length of zoom you're applying, can have an effect on both of these values ...

But that (generally speaking) should not be the case, because your wb should be dependent upon the colour of the light (not the subject) which is not changing from shot to shot, and similarly, as the EV of the light is remaining constant, so too should your exposure.

Or you're in a dark bar, shooting performers on the stage. They're being lit by the stage lighting, which, while maybe not as constant as the sun will be at the track, it will still have some consistency.

So again, wb might be better set to a constant known value. If you then choose to meter based off something that you can determine as a constant, you can then pretty well expect to see your exposures nailed, and consistently so.

Bottom line is that if you can think about introducing your workflow concepts earlier in the process - at the time of shooting - you may be able to simplify the time (and work) that you find yourself doing in post.

And of course I recognise that not all shooting scenarios can be described in the way that I have done so here, but I think you'd be surprised at just how many might be able to be distilled to just a few, rather than 100 images each with their own unique set of values.

Even a wedding can be boiled down to several similar units, rather than four or five hundred individual shots.

[gstark]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

hmm...no i believe they are, cos the RAW images turn out very differently depending on the settings you pick when you upload onto PC so they must be applied to the raw image str8 out of camera.

Certainly, as they are presented to you in the Nikon viewing tools, they seem to be applied.

But that is only wrt them being displayed: the image data is not touched by those settings. It's only presentation: smoke and mirrors, if you like.

And printing is just another word for "display" in this context.

[chrisk]

personally i prefer to shoot completely raw with no colour or sharpneing at all so i can do it PP.

Note that none of those are actually applied to the raw. Most raw processing software will use them as the default when converting, but you can always undo them. However, I agree with you, I try to turn them off in the camera as it reduces the steps in PP. i.e. I don't have to turn them off before I decide how much I want for that particular image.

hmm...no i believe they are, cos the RAW images turn out very differently depending on the settings you pick when you upload onto PC so they must be applied to the raw image str8 out of camera.

Certainly, as they are presented to you in the Nikon viewing tools, they seem to be applied.

But that is only wrt them being displayed: the image data is not touched by those settings. It's only presentation: smoke and mirrors, if you like.

And printing is just another word for "display" in this context.

ahh, i see yes, you may be right, i never realised that. i use NX for my raw editing so i only ever see it this way. so i take it that WB for example is taken into account in all editing programs but the finer adjustments of sharpening and contrast etc are excluded if you open it in say CS3 ?