This may seem like an odd question. Can anyone tell me about the durablilty of the LCD glass on the D3s (D4). I was considering the D4 but am concerned about the screen. The D800 looks like it will have the protective cover. I can be rough on the camera so really want some protection for the screen.

TH's original post is here:
http://www.bythom.com/2009%20Nikon%20News.htm
It's near the top, entitled "The Inverted Razor Blade" (Dec 24th).

jonnyapple said:
Yes well, I can't say it was my idea. A couple of threads started when Thom Hogan suggested it on his site:

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1196
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1373
edit: found another
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1737

Many thanks! I'll check them out.

heartyfisher said:
Welcome tangent. good to see different points of views.

Interesting idea re the 3 jpgs then HDR merge. I must try that some time.

Regarding the FPS flash. what happens is the flash itself creates a burst of multiple flashes for the duration of 1/250 seconds at something like 80,000 flashes per second. so basically it becomes a constant source of light for 1/250 seconds. so at the flash sync of 1/250 second you get the "full power" of the flash (I am not sure if it is as powerful as a normal non FPS mode) because teh power output is constant. if you reduce the shutter speed you reduce light from the flash.

@ jonnyA : re the ND filter. wont the ND filter reduce the flash as well? so what do you gain from using the ND filter with flash?

Thank you :) I can't take credit for the exposure-merge idea. A friend of mine with an S5pro does it to get truly HDR like images, though those cameras are famed for their DR. I don't actually use HDR merge tools, but rather the "exposure fusion" function of photomatix. I find this to create less of an obvious "HDR" effect, but is far less time consuming than the laborious and nuanced "mixing down" process one must go through to convert a 32bit HDR composite to an 8bit jpeg.

Interesting information about the flash operation there! I was under the impression it worked slightly differently. My understanding was that the flash fires in a single continuous "burst" at all shutter speeds up to the max sync speed (usually about 1/250s as you rightly point out). Above that, the flash can be set to operate in FP (focal plane - confusing name given the camera shutter is always a focal plane shutter) mode, in which it strobes many thousands of times a second (again as you rightly point out). However, operating in this mode it doesn't produce anywhere near it's maximum output for a single sustained burst. The reason the flash must strobe above the maximum sync speed is that at higher speeds, the shutter does not exposes the whole sensor for the period of time equivalent to the shutter speed. Rather, the front and rear shutter curtains follow each other across the sensor, exposing just a narrow vertical strip of the sensor to light at any given instant. Thus, if the flash were to fire in it's normal mode, only a thin band of light would appear in the image. Instead, it strobes - rapidly enough such that each band is exposed to multiple flashes i would guess - so as to illuminate the whole sensor for the duration of the "open" shutter.

EDIT: It occurs to me that that's exactly what you WERE saying and i've just misread it (apart from the power output thingy). Sorry!

Yes well, I can't say it was my idea. A couple of threads started when Thom Hogan suggested it on his site:

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1196
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1373
edit: found another
http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1737

jonnyapple said:
Yes, I agree that there's no right way to do things. To each his own, and I've not even tried the three jpeg method, so I'm not in a position to criticize, anyway!

Good point about the single release with bracketing. I guess it can't hurt to give people the option to have continuous release through multiple bracket sets. This is why Nikon needs to open their firmware development. Photographers would come up with so many great options that are possible with the current hardware, just crippled by the firmware.

I'm definitely supportive of the whole open firmware idea! I'm a software developer by trade. As you say above, there's no right way to do things, so different firmware versions offering different compromises would give us all the most flexibility.

heartyfisher said:
@ jonnyA : re the ND filter. wont the ND filter reduce the flash as well? so what do you gain from using the ND filter with flash?

Exactly. That's why I said you'd need more power. But if the limitation isn't power and is instead actually the sync speed, ND filters will bring down the ambient light for you to where you can sync. Tangent's scenario is one where with wide apertures (say f/4 at 1/2000s, for example) you won't get the flash to sync because the shutter is open for too short a time. If you shoot through a 3-stop ND filter, you'd be at 1/250s ( (2^3)/2000s ) at f/4—within the range you can sync your strobes. Without the ND filter, you have to stop down to f/16 to get that shutter speed and, besides softening of the in-focus objects due to diffraction, you also get what tangent said he's trying to avoid—a busy, in-focus background.

Welcome tangent. good to see different points of views.

Interesting idea re the 3 jpgs then HDR merge. I must try that some time.

Regarding the FPS flash. what happens is the flash itself creates a burst of multiple flashes for the duration of 1/250 seconds at something like 80,000 flashes per second. so basically it becomes a constant source of light for 1/250 seconds. so at the flash sync of 1/250 second you get the "full power" of the flash (I am not sure if it is as powerful as a normal non FPS mode) because teh power output is constant. if you reduce the shutter speed you reduce light from the flash.

@ jonnyA : re the ND filter. wont the ND filter reduce the flash as well? so what do you gain from using the ND filter with flash?

Yes, I agree that there's no right way to do things. To each his own, and I've not even tried the three jpeg method, so I'm not in a position to criticize, anyway!

Good point about the single release with bracketing. I guess it can't hurt to give people the option to have continuous release through multiple bracket sets. This is why Nikon needs to open their firmware development. Photographers would come up with so many great options that are possible with the current hardware, just crippled by the firmware.

jonnyapple said:
Welcome to the forum, tangent.

At full power I think the Nikon hotshoe strobes are generally in the ms range (1/1000s). You may be limited by your flash sync speed and not your duration. Before you take that setup to your next wedding, check that you actually can get the results you're looking for with whatever setup you're going to use for flash sync. You could also look into getting a set of ND filters to bring your shutter speed down to where you can sync, but remember that you'll need more power from your strobes if you do. For fill you'll probably be fine, though.

I can't say for sure because it's not what I do, but I think you should be able to get the effects you want without generating three jpegs and combining them. You should be able to get all the same info from a single tone curve adjustment and/or local contrast adjustment (called clarity in lightroom—not sure if photomatix has something similar).

I don't think there's a way to turn off the bracketing pause (stop?) because it lets you know where you are in a bracketing sequence. No offense, but I don't know what you're expecting from the camera's meter if you think the D3s's is unreliable. ;-)

Hi Jonny. Many thanks for the welcome and the advice!

I ended up rambling slightly confusingly in the point about flash - my apologies! Certainly it is the sync speed which limits usage of flash in such situations rather than flash duration. I was speaking about the hypothetical situation in which shutter sync speed was not limited by the speed at which the FP shutter becomes a travelling "vertical slit". In this situation, one could theoretically sync at any speed up to the flash duration, assuming all other factors are equal (which I'm guessing they're probably not). Obviously as you rightly point out though, in practice we don't live in this world. I was speaking of my studio strobes in the same context - if the FP shutter were NOT limited to a mere 1/250s in "normal" operation, then in theory my studio strobes would sync up to 1/9000s (their duration). Apparently i've read that the D3 syncs with a hot shoe flash at 1/250, but with a studio flash up to 1/320s (perhaps via the sync cord?). Not sure why these numbers should differ, as my understanding was that the flash sync speed is limited by the aforementioned "vertical slit" behaviour of the FP shutter at high speed. Doubtless there's a gap in my understanding here!

At my last wedding i just used an SB900 on camera with a Flip It diffuser, part-back-lit the subjects with the sun, then filled in the shadow with the flash. I was limited in how far i could knock the ambient down though because of the flash power. My studio units have a serious advantage here, being Bowens 750WS, 500WS and 400WS units, which is why i'm considering taking just the one to use as either key or fill depending on how i mix with the sun. I trigger them with cheapo ebay CRT301p radio triggers, which work outstandingly well for the ~£10 price tag. Trigger is a hot shoe affair, and the receivers connect to the units via PC connector.

ND filters are a great idea! Why didn't i thin of that?! :)

Quite right about the tone curve adjustment - at the end of the day the tonal resolution/headroom is there in the raw file, so you can just use curves to compress the information into the "visible" 8bit region in your raw converter, then save to jpeg. However, as much as this is going to sound crazy, i find it quicker doing it the "exposure fusion" way! I use capture NX 2 for raw processing, and it's pretty quick to apply exposure compensation to the image 3 times and save to jpeg. Far easier than fiddling with the tone curve to make minor adjustments to get the effect i'm looking for. It's all horses for courses though i suppose! Many may well prefer the latter method.

I figured it was something along those lines, but you can still use the camera in single release mode whilst bracketing though, in which case it's up to you to count how far you are through the sequence. It would only be as inconvenient as that (harder to count at 9fps though i suppose).

Haha! You're also quite right about the meter - no matter how good something is, we always want more, right? ;) I'm really just speaking about those very challenging exposure environments - brides white dress etc. To be honest though, there really is so much headroom for making PP exposure compensation in raw with the D3s, that it's no great problem. I've increased shots by over a 1.5 stops before without too much difficulty. With careful noise processing after the fact (i use topaz denoise 4) there are no ill effects for the sort of things I'll be using the shots for.

Welcome to the forum, tangent.

At full power I think the Nikon hotshoe strobes are generally in the ms range (1/1000s). You may be limited by your flash sync speed and not your duration. Before you take that setup to your next wedding, check that you actually can get the results you're looking for with whatever setup you're going to use for flash sync. You could also look into getting a set of ND filters to bring your shutter speed down to where you can sync, but remember that you'll need more power from your strobes if you do. For fill you'll probably be fine, though.

I can't say for sure because it's not what I do, but I think you should be able to get the effects you want without generating three jpegs and combining them. You should be able to get all the same info from a single tone curve adjustment and/or local contrast adjustment (called clarity in lightroom—not sure if photomatix has something similar).

I don't think there's a way to turn off the bracketing pause (stop?) because it lets you know where you are in a bracketing sequence. No offense, but I don't know what you're expecting from the camera's meter if you think the D3s's is unreliable. ;-)

I recently upgraded to a D3s and to be honest, it's pretty much the perfect camera for me as things stand. I'm in the process of moving into wedding/event photography (shot my first wedding last weekend!) and whilst I do some studio stuff in my spare time, it's primarily as a hobbyist rather than a professional, so I don't sweat the missing MPs too much (if you believe there are any).

As far as a general purpose D4 goes however, here's a few things I'd like to see:

* As has already been mentioned, the ability to sync flash at higher shutters (via an electronic shutter) would be great. Doing outdoor portraits at weddings in the mid afternoon sun, however you position your subjects - other than with the sun behind you which = nasty squinting - the flash is useful for filling in shadows. Often you might also be exposing for a compromise of background/sky (so probably under a bit) and your only option when shooting with flash is to close down the aperture. I'd love to be able to get shallower DOF and use the shutter to block the ambient. I know flash duration has been mentioned here too, but for some reason i was under the impression that dedicated hot shoe flash guns had extremely short durations, like 1/50,000s. Is that totally incorrect? My studio strobes have a duration of 1/9000s anyway, which is more than enough, and I'm hoping to use those with a battery pack at my next wedding.

* More dynamic range would also be nice. I shoot in 14bit nef, and often create 3 jpegs for exposure fusion in photomatix - +0.3, 0, -0.3 - to exploit the extra headroom in the raw. It's amazing the detail you can pull out of the highlights when under exposing the nefs, but one always wants more :) One caveat i would mention here though is that high DR can often = low local contrast without careful PP. Lower global contrast is generally my aim.

* An almost trivial point, but one i'm going to mention because it really gets on my nerves. When bracketing in continuous drive mode, the D3s only shoots the number of bracketed shots then stops, irrespective of whether you keep the shutter release held down. What i want it to do is just keep shooting bracketed triplets (or whatever the number) over and over again. When doing candid/reportage stuff - which is the majority of my work at weddings - continuous drive is really useful. However, the camera's meter is not always reliable so a spread of exposures would really help. It'd be great to combine these two features. Maybe you already can and I just haven't found the setting? If so, someone please help me!!

* 16mp. Not too exercised about this, but helps with cropping (focus breathing of the 70-200 VRII which i'm about to buy being a case in point). Not sure i'd have this at the expense of the ISO performance though. I've seen a lot of people claim the iso performance of the D3s is redundant. Well, not for me. I routinely shoot at 10,000 and get usable results. I do a lot of low-light stuff, and better high sensitivity performance is always welcome. It gives you more flexibility in other lighting environments too.

And that's all i can think of. Movie modes aren't important for me really, although i'm in partnership with a videographer and i suppose having the ability to record HD through decent glass on my camera as well as his equipment would be welcome under some circumstances.

An option where it cooks dinner and does the dishes. JK

Ok, seriously, I wouldn't mind a hybrid of the D3s and D3x.

ALinNZ said:
oh and the D4 must be able to turn you into a photographic god when it's in your hands :-))

No according to folks on this forum that would be the D90 with the 35mm f1.8 lens attached :^P

I'd like to be able to hold the shutter up and use the self timer, also wouldn't it be great if we could change the pixel count from 12.1 to 24 mega pixels as I think I read they are the same chip just configured differently, no doubt someone here will put me right just a thought though. Wireless + Bluetooth and be able to control SB900 with radio signal not IR and still use TTL, I think thats it, oh and the D4 must be able to turn you into a photographic god when it's in your hands :-))

Dont think D4 will have much better ISO than d3S. Maybe more MP but similar ISO at same IQ.

Would love an Open Nikon! And really Open it !! let us get down to the buffers and shutter control! I have quite a few Ideas there!!

I don't know that there's an advantage to 16 bit, anyway. You're limited to fewer than 16 bits of dynamic range in your sensor by noise sources that aren't going to go away anytime (or anytime soon?). I'd rather have more megapixels, too. Not that I'm complaining about 12...

HotDuckZ said:
D4? I want...

- PLEASE NIKON, MOVE AWAY LV BUTTON FROM SOUND RECORDING BUTTON!!

- 2 stop better in Noise.
- Better Auto Focus, more coverage for FX user.
- Better Cross-type AF points. (as D2)
- A huge better in Dynamic Range.
- 12 Megapixels but 16-bit NEF.
- Interchangeable view finder can share with D5.
- Full HD

- MH-24 (Dual slot, supplied), MH-25 (Single slot, optional) Thin and Small Charger.

- In camera VR

16bit? I don't think most people take full advantage of 14bit NEFs yet, and it would take a lot more in camera CPU power, which could have a less than ideal impact on battery life. I don't think staying with 12MP is an option for the D4, if they don't step up the MP to at least 16MP, they will loose pro customers.

I know older pro SLRs had interchangeable viewfinders, but I never figured out why someone would want that and still don't. Full HD is almost a given, Nikon would be very silly not to have 1080p in their next generation cameras.

A wider AF area, and more cross type sensors would be great. I really wish Nikon didn't cram all the cross type sensors in the middle, spread them out a little!

My hands!

D4? I want...

- PLEASE NIKON, MOVE AWAY LV BUTTON FROM SOUND RECORDING BUTTON!!

- 2 stop better in Noise.
- Better Auto Focus, more coverage for FX user.
- Better Cross-type AF points. (as D2)
- A huge better in Dynamic Range.
- 12 Megapixels but 16-bit NEF.
- Interchangeable view finder can share with D5.
- Full HD

- MH-24 (Dual slot, supplied), MH-25 (Single slot, optional) Thin and Small Charger.

- In camera VR

Yes Jonny should be only in D300s and up models, and it could actual help them sell more highend models. There are so many features that could be thought off

Pete

bmxdad said:
Yes Jonny Nikon would properly not ever do it, because they can not see the benefit from doing it, for that I would say get the blinds off and open your eyes

Pete

I completely agree, Pete. If I know developer nerds (and I know some personally) they would buy a Nikon DSLR just to see what they could do with it if Nikon opened up the firmware (instant market expansion). Why I don't think Nikon will do it is because right now they have an interest in keeping some features off of their low-end models. They have to justify the premium charged for the high-end models, and artificially crippling the low-end models in software is an easy way to do it while keeping up the IQ by putting the high-end sensors in them.

But if they sold only the higher-end models with open-source firmware and released a development kit for it then it could keep everyone happy. A consumer could decide if they're willing or not willing to pay the extra money for the open-source feature. The best thing is that it could turn into a whole lot of new features that no one had even thought of when the camera came out—some of which Nikon could then easily port to the firmware of the low-end cameras and sell them as features that beat the competition's offerings at the same price. All of this would be free (or cheap) software development for Nikon and it would also encourage innovation.

Apple has high profit margins because they overprice most of their products, doesn't stop me from buying some of them, but you do have to keep that in mind. Nikon cannot afford to become Leica, or in other words a premium brand, like Apple.

PB PM said:
Do like Apple, you mean safety through obscurity/low market share (7.2% of the PC market in February)? I doubt that would work well for Nikon's profit margin.

Yes but that 7.2% has a very solid profit margin for Apple, The Open Software for Nikon is not about making money from selling the software but about making the DSLR's more desirable to have, just like the Iphone. Read this from Thom Hogan if you have not done so already

http://www.bythom.com/2009%20Nikon%20News.htm

Yes Jonny Nikon would properly not ever do it, because they can not see the benefit from doing it, for that I would say get the blinds off and open your eyes

Pete

I agree, Valon. There are a lot of people who would be willing to develop for an open-source camera firmware, and there are lots of things that are crippled by software (I'm sure Nikon realizes this and keeps it that way to protect their pricing structure, so I don't think it's happening anytime soon).
There was a thread like this a while back so I won't repeat myself: http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1373