Old prime manual lenses on Nikon DSLRs?

a)rogers(dot)com" "gbuchana(a)rogers(dot)com" wrote:
Jeremy Nixon wrote:

Basically, the non-electronic connection only works on Nikon's "pro"
DSLR bodies, and is left out of the consumer-level ones for cost reasons.

I disagree. It is for market segmentation and planned obsolescence.

I disagree. The wealth of great lenses available is one of the biggest
and most significant advantages Nikon has; if they could bring that to
the consumer level without what would be a significant price increase for
that market, they would be crazy not to. But if it added $100 to the cost
of a D70 that could be very bad for them.

--
Jeremy |

In article ,
Jeremy Nixon wrote:
a)rogers(dot)com" "gbuchana(a)rogers(dot)com" wrote:
Jeremy Nixon wrote:

Basically, the non-electronic connection only works on Nikon's "pro"
DSLR bodies, and is left out of the consumer-level ones for cost reasons.

I disagree. It is for market segmentation and planned obsolescence.

I disagree. The wealth of great lenses available is one of the biggest
and most significant advantages Nikon has; if they could bring that to
the consumer level without what would be a significant price increase for
that market, they would be crazy not to. But if it added $100 to the cost
of a D70 that could be very bad for them.

That doesn't explain why the light meter is disabled completely. My guess is
that with some firmware hacks any Nikon camera that has DoF preview, can do
aperture priority exposure without any kind of aperture coupling.

Just adding a mode where the light meter is enabled doesn't cost anything
either and makes bellows and microscope work possible.

In my opinion, 'planned obsolescence' or value pricing is the best explanation
for Nikon's behavior.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

According to Philip Homburg :
In article ,
Jeremy Nixon wrote:
a)rogers(dot)com" "gbuchana(a)rogers(dot)com" wrote:
Jeremy Nixon wrote:

Basically, the non-electronic connection only works on Nikon's "pro"
DSLR bodies, and is left out of the consumer-level ones for cost reasons.

I disagree. It is for market segmentation and planned obsolescence.

I disagree. The wealth of great lenses available is one of the biggest
and most significant advantages Nikon has; if they could bring that to
the consumer level without what would be a significant price increase for
that market, they would be crazy not to. But if it added $100 to the cost
of a D70 that could be very bad for them.

That doesn't explain why the light meter is disabled completely. My guess is
that with some firmware hacks any Nikon camera that has DoF preview, can do
aperture priority exposure without any kind of aperture coupling.

The problem, with most older lenses at least, is that the lens
is wide open until the moment of exposure (unless you are holding the
depth-of-field preview button depressed -- which draws extra power from
the battery for the duration of that time depressed.) That button is
not a mechanical linkage as in the older cameras -- it asks the camera's
electronics to stop down the lens via a solenoid, which you can hear
"click" when you press the button. This means faster battery depletion,
and perhaps a faster burnout of the solenoid, depending on how much it
is overdesigned. It *does* mean that with a firmware hack, it could be
asked to stop down when the shutter button is half depressed to take the
metering -- but that might get in the way of good composition on a
moving subject, and the ability to recognize the proper moment for full
depression -- especially at smaller (numerically larger) apertures.

The D70 has *only* the single sensor which assures the camera
body that the lens aperture ring is set to the fully-stopped-down mode,
so the camera body can achieve any desired aperture within the range of
the lens. The actual information as to how many stops below the maximum
aperture comes either from another sensor (on the AI lenses), or from
the chip in the lens. (And back in the old Nikon-F days, this
information (plus the maximum aperture value itself) came from the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring coupling to the Photomic
meter-pentaprism.)

So -- while the camera can measure how much light is coming
through the lens wide opened, it can't predict how much that is going to
reduce when the lens stops down for exposure.

Just adding a mode where the light meter is enabled doesn't cost anything
either and makes bellows and microscope work possible.

Yes -- it would -- but it would also produce lots of very bad
exposures for people who did not understand the difference between the
lens wide open for focusing and stopped down for the actual exposure.
Rather than have people complaining about this, (because they forgot to
stop the lens down for metering), they have simply disabled the meter to
prevent these problems.

In my opinion, 'planned obsolescence' or value pricing is the best explanation
for Nikon's behavior.

I think that it is the "value pricing" as the more logical
explanation, given the problems attendant on enabling the metering
without the aperture-ring-setting sensor.

Now -- if the camera body had a way of sensing that what was
monted on it did not have an aperture pin (yet another sensor which adds
to the cost of the camera), then it *could* enable through-the-lens
metering. But -- it could be fooled by stacking some lens system
without the aperture pin onto a telextender *with* such a pin.

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Philip Homburg wrote:

That doesn't explain why the light meter is disabled completely. My guess is
that with some firmware hacks any Nikon camera that has DoF preview, can do
aperture priority exposure without any kind of aperture coupling.

Just adding a mode where the light meter is enabled doesn't cost anything
either and makes bellows and microscope work possible.

Oh, it would cost. A mode on a consumer camera that does stop-down metering
while the DOF preview is on? Don't get me wrong, I think they should have
it, but -- importantly -- they shouldn't tell anyone, or else it would end
up costing a lot more than the lack of metering.

If they made it an official feature, they would have to say that the camera
is compatible with manual lenses, but have a little footnote that says, okay,
when we say it's compatible, we're using a definition of "compatible" that
only a marketing executive could agree with. There would be cries from
outraged consumers the world over; cameras would be returned, and Nikon's
support would spend their lives explaining the "compatibility" to people
who would never be happy with it. Once they finished explaining it they
would then have to explain why the EXIF couldn't show the correct aperture,
and why flash metering wouldn't work, and on and on. It would be a nightmare
of epic proportions. Better to just say they don't work.

Personally, I would like to know how much cost the linkage would really add,
because I think it should be there in the first place, but that's only
because I have no idea what the price tag would be. But I really think it
has to be significant or it would be there. (At that level, anything more
than $40-50 would be significant, since people are price-shopping.)

--
Jeremy |

In article , Jeremy Nixon wrote:
Philip Homburg wrote:
That doesn't explain why the light meter is disabled completely. My guess is
that with some firmware hacks any Nikon camera that has DoF preview, can do
aperture priority exposure without any kind of aperture coupling.

Just adding a mode where the light meter is enabled doesn't cost anything
either and makes bellows and microscope work possible.

Oh, it would cost. A mode on a consumer camera that does stop-down metering
while the DOF preview is on? Don't get me wrong, I think they should have
it, but -- importantly -- they shouldn't tell anyone, or else it would end
up costing a lot more than the lack of metering.

If they made it an official feature, they would have to say that the camera
is compatible with manual lenses, but have a little footnote that says, okay,
when we say it's compatible, we're using a definition of "compatible" that
only a marketing executive could agree with. There would be cries from
outraged consumers the world over; cameras would be returned, and Nikon's
support would spend their lives explaining the "compatibility" to people
who would never be happy with it. Once they finished explaining it they
would then have to explain why the EXIF couldn't show the correct aperture,
and why flash metering wouldn't work, and on and on. It would be a nightmare
of epic proportions. Better to just say they don't work.

Yet didn't Pentax do exactly this on the ist-D models?
You have to set an option to allow metering with manual lenses, so people
won't stumble onto it without warning.

Thanks Don & Jeremy for the detailed explanations. That makes it clearer
to me what is going on.

In article ,
Jeremy Nixon wrote:
Personally, I would like to know how much cost the linkage would really add,
because I think it should be there in the first place, but that's only
because I have no idea what the price tag would be. But I really think it
has to be significant or it would be there. (At that level, anything more
than $40-50 would be significant, since people are price-shopping.)

Take a look at the price at which the D100 was introduced (around $2000
according to dpreview). Do you think that $100 would be a big problem for
the buyers of that camera?


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

In article ,
Jeremy Nixon wrote:
If they made it an official feature, they would have to say that the camera
is compatible with manual lenses, but have a little footnote that says, okay,
when we say it's compatible, we're using a definition of "compatible" that
only a marketing executive could agree with. There would be cries from
outraged consumers the world over; cameras would be returned, and Nikon's
support would spend their lives explaining the "compatibility" to people
who would never be happy with it. Once they finished explaining it they
would then have to explain why the EXIF couldn't show the correct aperture,
and why flash metering wouldn't work, and on and on. It would be a nightmare
of epic proportions. Better to just say they don't work.

Well, EXIF info doesn't give aperture anyhow with non-CPU lenses. At least
not on a D1.

It is funny that you mention flash metering. If there is one disaster area,
it is TTL flash metering.

Nikon introduces all kinds of incompatibilities and gets away with it. Many
manuals of Nikon camera have detailed lists of many kinds of lenses and what
kind of features you can expect.

But, Nikon doesn't have to care about what the D70 doesn't do. I doubt that
a lot of D70 buyers know what they are missing. They just assume that it
is normal that a camera mounted on a bellows doesn't have a working
lightmeter.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

In article ,
DoN. Nichols wrote:
It *does* mean that with a firmware hack, it could be
asked to stop down when the shutter button is half depressed to take the
metering -- but that might get in the way of good composition on a
moving subject, and the ability to recognize the proper moment for full
depression -- especially at smaller (numerically larger) apertures.

I would have it stop down the lens just before the actual exposure.
Of course in M mode, you would press the DoF button, set shutter speed and
aperture and continue framing.

Yes -- it would -- but it would also produce lots of very bad
exposures for people who did not understand the difference between the
lens wide open for focusing and stopped down for the actual exposure.
Rather than have people complaining about this, (because they forgot to
stop the lens down for metering), they have simply disabled the meter to
prevent these problems.

Yeah right. People were so much smarter in the seventies. The FE simply had
a folding tab that would allow mounting non-Ai lenses using stop-down
metering.

Anybody who uses one of the shift lenses has to remember to stop down the
lens first, then set the expsure, then shift the lens, and then take
the picture (except for the F3 where you can measure exposure while the
lenses is shifted).

The buyers of the D100 were stupid consumers who just wanted to blow
$2000 on a toy.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Philip Homburg wrote:


Well, EXIF info doesn't give aperture anyhow with non-CPU lenses. At least
not on a D1.

It does on a D2x, at least. I never used a D1.

But, Nikon doesn't have to care about what the D70 doesn't do. I doubt that
a lot of D70 buyers know what they are missing. They just assume that it
is normal that a camera mounted on a bellows doesn't have a working
lightmeter.

Exactly. They know their target market.

--
Jeremy |