Month: January 2012

Nikon D7000 availability

> When will the d7000 be availible in stores again cant find one anywhere?

The Nikon D7000 is produced in the superfactory in Thailand. This means that production was halted because of the flood in Thailand last year. The supply channel has emptied out during the holidays. Production should be back online this month and you’ll find availability you should find the stores will all have availability by March at the latest.

Try to get onto a waiting list at your local camera store. Due to the way Nikon is regulating prices, other than sales tax, the price should be the same as online. It will be much lower than trying to purchase on eBay today.

Posted on by tychay 2

Will my D40 lenses fit the D5100 or D7000

More fun on NikonUSA

> Will my D40 lenses fit the D5100 or D7000?
>
> Subject says it all–will my D40 lenses fit the D5100 or D7000? And how, in general, can one tell which lenses will fit which cameras?

The short answer is: Yes, all lenses that “fit” your D40 will fit the D5100 D7000 and later Nikon dSLRs with an F-mount (that’s currently all Nikons dSLRs).

The only Nikon F mount lenses that will not fit on these cameras are some that were designed to operate with the mirror up and had different box dimensions. These mounts would crash the reflex mirror. Fortunately there are very few of these lenses around and most are collectors items so you won’t run into it. A quick google will warn you if this is the case.

But what you are really asking is do they mount and work the same? The answer is still: Yes, but with one exception. Nikon lenses with a “G” designation but not an “AF-S” one will not auto-focus on the D5100 or D7000, but will on the D40. Fortunately, there are very few lenses that qualify for that, and those that do are low-end lenses that have since been replaced by better/cheaper models—the only time you have to worry is when someone is trying to pawn off a dud second-hand.

Note that any old AF lenses you purchase for the D40 will now auto-focus on the D7000. Whereas before they didn’t at all because the latter has an in-body motor while the former does not. You do lose matrix metering capability vs. the D40, but most people will take AF over the matrix meter.

As for understanding the smorgasbord of compatibility, [Nikonians has a friendly chart](http://www.nikonians.org/nikon/slr-lens.html). (There may be a slight error. I don’t believe the D5100 has an AF motor in it.)

Another thing to note is that where the Nikonians chart has a big “No!” for pre-AI lenses, you can use a [John White’s conversion service](http://www.aiconversions.com/) to “upgrade” the pre-1977 lenses to an AI lens so that the aperture functions correctly when the shutter is pressed. (These lenses, with the exception mentioned above will mount, but they the aperture controls won’t be automatic.)

This is one of the strengths and pitfalls of the Nikon system. Nikon has decided to ensure mount compatibility for the F mount since its inception (it predates Pentax and Canon). But advances in technology need to be incorporated into the lenses also. Other companies either break backward compatibility across the line or are slow to implement new features to ensure body/lens compatibility at the right price. Nikon splits this difference with deciding how much of the old lens suite to build in the camera based on the price point/budget and usage scenario (size/weight) of its typical shooters.

Posted on by tychay 1

Monitor cover for Nikon D5000/D5100?

Sometimes I get bored and answer questions on the Nikon USA forum:

> Is there a monitor cover which will work with the D5100? I am thinking of a cover similar to the BM-8 that came with my D70.

The 5100 has a flip out LCD, so there is no need for a monitor cover. Instead, just flip out the LCD, rotate it, and flip it back in.

There are third party sites that make “[screen protectors][google screen protector]” which are thin films designed to protect the LCD from scratching. I don’t know how effective or useful they are since the glass or plastic used to protect the Nikon LCDs has improved over the years and quality varies from model-to-model. Plus, it is simply not very likely that a dSLR camera LCD will get scratched—dSLRs just aren’t often found in your pocket along with your keys a la iPhone 😉

For instance, my Nikon D3 with a glass screen and no plastic protector doesn’t have a scratch even though I’m and outdoor shooter and have tens of thousands of shutter clicks. Similarly, my GF’s Nikon D5000 doesn’t have a scratch because it is easy to rotate the display to a safe position for storage and transportation.

BTW, avoid most “anti-glare” thin film protectors unless you are sure you know what you are doing. They work by frosting the film to scatter the reflection. However the material used in the frosting may be too close to the size of the pixels in the high-density monitors of a camera LCD. When that happens you end up being able to see the individual red, green and blue pixels in the display making it annoying. 🙂

[google screen protector]: http://www.google.com/search?q=lcd+screen+protector+nikon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=PzF&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=lcd+screen+protector+nikon+5100

Posted on by tychay 0

It's just a tool

Previously: [Part 1][programming1], [Part 2][programming2], [Part 3][programming3], and [Part 4][programming4].

I received an interesting question the other day from a recruiter:

> Would you be open to moving away from PHP?

My answer:

First, by analogy. I’m a photographer, most of the cameras I own are manufactured by Nikon. This is like asking if I’m open to using a Canon.

I happen to be very adept with using a Nikon. However, I don’t think [the photons bouncing around care much what logo sits on front of the camera][camera purchasing] they are in. I’d be a poor photographer if what I did was care about the brand of camera I carry instead of the picture I am taking.

PHP is designed to solve one problem: the web problem. It solves it very well—as evidenced by marketshare and its continuing durability. At nearly all other stuff, PHP happens to suck at.

However it (the web problem) [isn’t that difficult] of a problem (having been solved repeatedly by languages such as Ruby, Python, C, C++, Java, Javascript, etc.). The real difficult parts are invariably outside the “web problem.” (Example: Twitter’s web problem was solved in Ruby using Rails, but their real problems were not web problems and of those problems, the most prominent was solved in Scala.)

I happen to be very adept at PHP. That pretty much means knowing that there is a better tool than to use PHP to solve the problem at hand at hand, and using that instead of PHP: MySQL, Apache, memcached, MongoDB, CouchDB, Scala, Erlang, Puppet, CruiseControl, AWS, etc.—none of which, to my knowledge anyway, written in PHP.

I’d be a poor programmer indeed if I thought that the problems I solved cared much the language I was adept in.

I’m not a poor programmer.

The Short answer: “Yes. Depends on the problem and the existing environment.”

(Recruiter was amused by my answer because he was owns a Canon. I suggested we “get on either side of the street and start making threatening dance moves at each other like [the Jets and the Sharks][west side story].”)

…

Another question I got:

> Which do you think is better [some programming language] or [another programming language]?

My answer:

They’re just tools. That’s like asking a handyman which they think is better: a hammer or a screwdriver.

(That elicited a laugh.)

…

Using a programming language is simply [a choice][making choices]. There are many things that go into making a correct choice that are far beyond what language one prefers for a problem that happens to be not that hard to solve in the first place.

[programming1]: http://terrychay.com/article/learning-programming.shtml “Learning Programming Part 1: 5 million”
[programming2]: http://terrychay.com/article/learning-frameworks.shtml “Learning Programming Part 2: Programming Frameworks”
[programming3]: http://terrychay.com/article/learning-programming-part-3-c-cplusplus-superiority.shtml “Learning Programming Part 3: C/C++ superiority”
[programming4]: http://terrychay.com/article/programming-is-hard.shtml “Learning Programming Part 4: “Programming is Hard””
[camera purchasing]: http://terrychay.com/article/camera-purchasing-aphorisms.shtml “Camera purchasing advice”
: http://terrychay.com/article/is-ruby-the-dog-and-php-the-dogfood.shtml “Is Ruby the dog and PHP the dogfood?”
[making choices]: http://terrychay.com/article/simple-prescriptions-and-making-choices.shtml “Simple prescriptions and making choices”
[west side story]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Story “West Side Story—Wikipedia”

Posted on by tychay 1