So far so good...

[ffutures]

Nikon D50 arrived yesterday... without the damn lens. So I phoned and raised hell, they apologised, and the lens appeared today. And having played for a bit I'm pretty pleased with it all. Only problem I've noticed so far is typical of long lenses - at anything like full extension the lens is very difficult to hold still, and the natural gripping point turns out to be exactly where the focus ring sits, and needs to turn on its own if the camera is running on autofocus. But since full extension is equivalent to a 500mm lens or longer that isn't very surprising. Just have to remember to use a tripod, and probably not autofocus on long shots. Minimum focal length (28mm) feels like a 55mm or 70mm lens on my old camera, so I may have to think about getting something a little wider eventually.

I got a couple of 2gb Kingston SD cards for £20 from SVP over the weekend - as a point of comparison, I paid more than that for a 32mb card for my Fuji a couple of years ago - and after taking eight or ten pictures it's saying I still have room for 526. I could learn to like that ;-)

I don't want to install the software at work but I'll upload a few pictures tonight.

Next I need to look at a microscope converter and angle finder. Fun fun fun...

Comments

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

Surely your 28 is only 42mm equivalent? I think it's the same chip as my d40, 1.5x crop. The finders in these things feel closer than they really are.

The long end, 300, is therefore 450 equivalent - though it seems to me that some zooms that claim to go to 300 actually fall a little short. Tripod territory except in horrendously bright light, anyway.

Surely you don't need to install the software? I believe your d50, like my d40, can just act as a USB mass storage device which anything can see without drivers. You may need to change a menu setting. This is what I do at work (and everywhere).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You could well be right on all counts, though it feels about the same as a 500mm on full extension that could be the viewfinder.

I think you're right about USB, but I don't want to risk it with this PC - for one thing, there's currently a problem with its anti-virus software and I don't want to risk transferring any nasties to the card.

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

The viewfinders do FEEL small. It put me off going digital for a long time. A week ago a non-camera-nerd friend of mine was comparing the view on the d40 w/30mm (45mm equivalent) to that on my old film FM w/50mm, and was convinced the 40 was "more zoomed in" until we actually tested it! You do get more used to it eventually.

Ah, good point, had forgotten the virus issue. I don't know about the potential for transfer of nasties - I doubt they'd do anything to the camera but it could be a very efficient way to spread them between machines. I've been ignoring that problem as the three computers my camera gets plugged into are all different OSs and I assume there aren't many viruses that can crossinfect...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

There are apprarently some viruses that find jpeg files and make them into infected executables, but I'm actually more worried about the file structure or files being corrupted. I doubt that this computer has any viruses, I visit a very limited range of web sites, but until the IT bods sort out the anti-virus program I don't know for sure.

[ricdavis.livejournal.com]

I've got a D50, and it does indeed act as a USB mass storage device (USB2 speed as well!). I'd have though you'd get more than 500 photos on a 2GB card, or are you shooting RAW?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It's 566 jpg photos (526 was a typo) with average size around 2.6 mb so far, which gives a total file size around 1.5gb assuming they're all the same. No idea what it's doing with the other half gig, presumably a lot of it is file structure etc. Does the number of pictures remaining change entirely linearly, or does it vary if some of the files are unusually small or large?

Given that a 2gb card now costs less than three rolls of film I'm reasonably happy and think I can live with the discrepancy...