Gone are the days that I spend a hard waiting period for a precious roll of film to finish and waiting anxiously for it to be posted and prints send back. Also, the days of dark room guess work, developing chemicals (developer, acid and fixer), photopaper and enlarger is a distant vivid memory.

While shooting, I can change the ISO setting, which is impossible to do on film. A roll cannot have mixed ISO of 100, 200, 320, 400, 800, 6400 etc.

With Nikon D7000, I can shoot and process RAW (NEF) images straightaway. It is a camera bolted on with an amazingly fast and portable studio (darkroom or lightroom).

The EXPEED2 proceesor is amazingly fast. My slow computer needs more than three minutes to process an EV change for a RAW file while D7000 does it in a second or two.

Very please with my D7000, it can do sharpening, monochrome with colour filtering effects, sketching (turning photo into handmade sketches for artist to work) , etc.

It helps me to develop new skills: shooting, processing and cleaning sensor!

The downside is AF finetune issues with my old AF Nikkor lens. The price is expensive too.

Alan,

I don't do any in-camera processing so I can't comment on that, but I also love that digital provides essentially instant images. And I am extremely happy that I've spent the money to upgrade to the D7000. I see the AF fine tune as a real bonus: my 16-85 VR didn't seem quite up to par until I dialled in a little negative tuning, now it is superb.

By "old AF Nikkor" do you mean your 50mm f/1.8? I have one of those, but I have to admit I don't think I've mounted it yet on the D7000. Maybe I should try it.

Gary
"Yea, Sussex by the sea!" - Rudyard Kipling

yes, 50mm f/1.8 is the problem.

Is your 50mm f/1.8 different from the 50mm f/1.8D?

I use the 50mm f/1.8D on a D7000 with no known problems. It doesn't work too good on my D5100 (No in camera autofocus).

What are the problems you are having?

Charlie

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

Mine is also an AF-D. I put it on the camera this afternoon and shot a few frames. Only one particular image caused problems, but I think that was an AF target problem. The rest were spot on.

When I tuned my 16-85, I ended up skipping all the clever scientific stuff. I noticed it was backfocusing on a particular close up subject so I just dialled in more and more negative fine tune until it got that image right. Then I walked around the back yard and shot things near and far, checked on the computer that focus was okay on all of them, and that was it. I think I settled on -10 adjustment. I suspect it's not perfect in all images, but my theory is that DOF will cover a lot of far-distance focus sins a lot of the time. If the lens is bang-on close up, that makes me happy.

Gary
"Yea, Sussex by the sea!" - Rudyard Kipling

Getting back to the film comparison, one of the people in my company recently returned from a 10-day vacation. He took about 2,500 digital images during his trip. I did the math and at 36 exposures per role that was about 70 rolls of film. Estimating a development and print cost of $12 per role that would have been $840 US. Almost the price of another camera!

Now I look at my SDHC cards and smile.

Larry

"Red is gray and yellow white, but we decide which is right
....and which is an illusion"

Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

It is Nikkor AF f/1.8 from 1988 for film camera on F801 and I like the aperture ring with distance marking.

Very cool soft filter effect for portraits. You can get three different settings too.

Very cool to try the cross hair lights effect too, you can choose 4, 6 or 8 lines with variation in lengths.

When I acquired my D7000 in April, I had big dreams for the six Nikon film lenses sitting unused in a hard carry case since 1995. I worked for a big publisher in Tokyo and we bought Nikon gear direct from the factory. All the lenses were pre-1978.

And none of them would synch up with the D7000. I was afraid I would break off the f-stop lever if I tried too hard. Even the camera store that sold me the D7000 and my two digital lenses couldn't get the description of my old lenses right. AI? AIS? What were these things.

The loss of my 300mm f4 E lens was particularly disappointing. But you know, I got good prices for them all on eBay and they are a distant memory.

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

In the OLD DAYS I could rewind the film just enough until the leader was still sticking out of the film cassette (listen and feel very carefully) to switch between ISO or BW/Colour.

Take track of how many shots you had taken and pop it back in, advance x number of frames and voila !

Steve