Page 1 of 2

New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:56 pm
by bfitzgerald
Looks like I'll have to send the D90 in for service the AF is causing issues consistency and accuracy wise. Esp noted since I picked up a Tamron 90mm f2.8 for F mount. I also have a metz 58 AF 2 which has yet to arrive and I might not get a chance to use it for a while!

But..my 2x Km5d's are still pretty much bang on for AF for some odd reason it's the second new camera with AF issues. And I avoided the D7k to save myself stress.

K-x had mirror slap that interfered with the the SR mechanism basically meaning you had to turn it off! K-r had the awful FF problem in a specific light. D90 now has AF problems not locking accurately at times and locking behind the subject. The 18-105mm VR would mask the problem due to the non fast lens speed, 90mm f2.8 shows it very clearly, the 35mm f1.8 does depending on distance to subject and lower contrast shots. I've no reason to suspect all 3 are faulty.

Does anyone have a camera that is in most cases accurate for AF? Because I'm starting to wonder if my mount moving exercise is becoming quite fruitless :evil:

I will give Nikon a chance to sort it out, I hope they can unlike Pentax who just didn't actually seem bothered by it at all. Wonder how Henry is getting on with his Canon?? ;-)

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:29 pm
by UrsaMajor
bfitzgerald wrote:Does anyone have a camera that is in most cases accurate for AF? Because I'm starting to wonder if my mount moving exercise is becoming quite fruitless :evil:
My personal experience has been quite acceptable with my KM 7D and my Sony A700.

Barring the discovery of some NOS (New Old Stock) in the back room of some dealer, I think you will have a problem finding an unused copy of either one, but perhaps you can find a really clean, low-mileage copy somewhere?

With best wishes,
- Tom -

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:35 pm
by pakodominguez
bfitzgerald wrote: Does anyone have a camera that is in most cases accurate for AF? Because I'm starting to wonder if my mount moving exercise is becoming quite fruitless :evil:
At what price?
get an A850, it goes for a little more than 1000 $ now

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:41 pm
by bfitzgerald
Being honest I think my A mount days are over bar playing around with the stuff I have. I've also started selling off other bits, whilst retaining a core of lenses and bits just in case something like this happens (and it has so good planning)

If Sony had a current OVF model I would consider that, but as they don't I think long term I'll simply end up where I was before ie frustrated and unhappy with their direction.

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:56 pm
by pakodominguez
bfitzgerald wrote:Being honest I think my A mount days are over ...
I believe my brother's D700 never had a problem, no AF problem, no other problem... If FF is not our cup of tea, get the D300S

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:25 pm
by bfitzgerald
I was toying with that idea though the D300s is a bit long in the tooth. We'll see if they can address this problem
I was thinking about saving up for the D700 it's not cheap though and it will take a while to get there.

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:27 pm
by pakodominguez
bfitzgerald wrote:I was toying with that idea though the D300s is a bit long in the tooth. We'll see if they can address this problem
I was thinking about saving up for the D700 it's not cheap though and it will take a while to get there.
Keep in mind that buying cheap is fake economy...

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:00 pm
by bfitzgerald
Well I have learnt that to a degree. I would not expect the D90 to mis focus with some of the shots I have. I mean the Km5d was not expensive and it seems to mostly be on target (of course it drops accuracy in low light but in extensive use it's not been an issue it's AF performance, bear in mind I'm not shooting action)

D90 is cheap ish, but it's not dirt cheap super budget body. Even a budget DSLR should hit AF most of the time.
I'll contact Nikon and see how this pans out probably be a few weeks, if things are not resolved properly I'll have to consider a D300s. Shouldn't have to spend £1000 on a body to get reasonable AF accuracy though.

And it takes away funds for a D700 later on. Not a huge problem I can live with that as I have some stuff I'm doing which will pay for it.

Here's a few examples red box indicates AF point

222.JPG
(105.23 KiB) Downloaded 2660 times

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:56 pm
by mvanrheenen
Ouch, those are serious misses. Good luck in your quest to get the gear that fits your needs (and wants).

Mark

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:41 am
by bakubo
bfitzgerald wrote:Wonder how Henry is getting on with his Canon?? ;-)
Still zero problems with my 60D. The only other digital cameras that I can say the same about are the Canon 30D, 300D, Minolta D7i, and various digicams. No 60D AF problems. The fastest lens I have for it is a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 that I bought in 2003. AF is fine with it.

My wife and I were in a store earlier this week and I saw they had a special, unadvertised sale on the Panasonic G3 + 14-42mm + 45-200mm kit for 44,800 yen (US$550) and I couldn't resist at that unbelievable price. My wife has been complaining about the size/weight of her A100 and 2 lenses so this is for her, but I will take charge of it for awhile to use and make sure it is working well. Fortunately, she agrees with this plan. :lol: This is my first experience actually using, in contrast to just holding, an m4/3 camera. I have had fun using it for the last few days. AF is much faster than the NEX cameras I have looked at.

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:11 am
by bfitzgerald
It gets better.. ;-)

Got my Metz today put it on the hotshoe firing away so I was thinking to myself wow great excellent flashgun exposures are bang on amazing.
Love it.

Came to take it off..oops, flash stuck on the hot shoe won't budge locking pin seems defective. Called Metz UK service they want it back and the camera
So now..just to add even more insult to injury I have to send my D90 to the Metz service centre with a flashgun stuck on it! Then when I get that back I'll need to ship it off to Nikon which I can't now do as the flash is stuck on it!

Awesome stuff I think things can't really get much worse, but you have to laugh right? :mrgreen:

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:39 pm
by mvanrheenen
Wait until the shipping service lose both, isn't that funny anymore then ,is it? :mrgreen:

No, seriously, you have some bad luck Barry!

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:51 pm
by pakodominguez
Karma?

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 11:53 pm
by Birma
Congrats on the new camera Henry! Looking forward to seeing some shots from it.

Hope your camera woes are soon over Barry.

Re: New camera woes continued!

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 1:25 am
by bakubo
Birma wrote:Congrats on the new camera Henry! Looking forward to seeing some shots from it.
This G3 with the 14-42mm kit lens is quite small and light so I am enjoying carrying it around instead of the 60D for awhile. The AF is quite fast, about like my A700 and 60D. I never use AF tracking so I mean it is very fast to lock-on when in single AF mode. It has an EVF and it has the advantages and disadvantages of the current EVF tech. The EVF is pretty good, maybe not quite up to the NEX 7, but I haven't tried them side-by-side. I shoot raw so I changed the photo style to natural, turned contrast all the way down, and turned saturation all the way down so that the EVF view is a bit less contrasty and also so the histogram is a bit more accurate for a raw file. A professional photographer in my hometown (Austin, Texas) wrote about the G3 recently and it was a nice article (I don't know him, by the way):

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.jp/201 ... -with.html

Apparently, among some of the idiots on the internet that article kicked up a storm so he wrote this funny rebuttal:

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.jp/201 ... -time.html

Over the last few days I also have played around a bit with face detect. Seems to work very well and might be useful sometimes. Last night I did a search and found this article about it:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... rt-ii.html

Barry, good luck getting everything working again!