Being very very new to digital and away from photography for 30 years or so I have many questions. My camera of choice will be a d700 and at this time Im just looking for the right deal.

The 700 is rated at 5fps and I believe 8 with the battery pack. Assuming you have GREAT light, what is the minimum shutter speed you can shoot with and take advantage of being able to shoot at 5fps and 8fp respectivley??

Thanks
Donnie

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comon...anybody..I would think this is a fairly simple question for those of you who have had the 700 for awile..Thanks!!

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>The 700 is rated at 5fps and I believe 8 with the battery
>pack. Assuming you have GREAT light, what is the minimum
>shutter speed you can shoot with and take advantage of being
>able to shoot at 5fps and 8fp respectivley??

Great light? At what aperture and ISO? I think your question is unfinished because ISO and aperture affect usable shutter speed. Your question only allows a calculation of the slowest technically usable shutter speed. So basic arithmetic gets you 1 sec/5 fps = 1/5 sec or faster, and 1 sec/8 fps = 1/8 sec or faster, but only if available light and aperture allow shutter speeds that fast.

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>
>>The 700 is rated at 5fps and I believe 8 with the battery
>>pack. Assuming you have GREAT light, what is the minimum
>>shutter speed you can shoot with and take advantage of
>being
>>able to shoot at 5fps and 8fp respectivley??
>
>Great light? At what aperture and ISO? I think your question
>is unfinished because ISO and aperture affect usable shutter
>speed. Your question only allows a calculation of the slowest
>technically usable shutter speed. So basic arithmetic gets you
>1 sec/5 fps = 1/5 sec or faster, and 1 sec/8 fps = 1/8 sec or
>faster, but only if available light and aperture allow shutter
>speeds that fast.
>
Sorry being new to this I am a bit ignorant.... When I said great light I said that as to say " we're shooting outside in daylight w/ lets say 2.8 glass and iso 200"..plenty of oppurtunity for fast frame rate. However can we really say that 5 frames per second calculates to 1/5 of a second? I would think you have to allow for cycle time for shutter and glass..yes?? That was the basis of my question...obviously at at very fast shutter speed this a mute point.

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>When I said
>great light I said that as to say " we're shooting
>outside in daylight w/ lets say 2.8 glass and iso
>200"..plenty of oppurtunity for fast frame rate. However
>can we really say that 5 frames per second calculates to 1/5
>of a second? I would think you have to allow for cycle time
>for shutter and glass..yes?? That was the basis of my
>question...obviously at at very fast shutter speed this a mute
>point.

I stated the "slowest technically usable" shutter speed. Of course a realistic application might dictate 1/10 or 1/20 sec or even faster. It's irrelevant. What's more important is what you're actually thinking of shooting with a D700 and fast glass. If you could describe the sort of scene or event or subject matter you're thinking of shooting, it will help us focus on the technical stuff.

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I expect you would need to be at a shutter speed of around 125th a second or more to get the high framing rates and sharp photographs. If the goal is to stop action and to nail a moment in a sequence then higher shutter speeds will likely be needed. The great thing about the D 700 is that you can adjust ISO safely to get the sensitivity you need if the light is not bright enough.

The MD-2 used on a Nikon F2 has an adjustable framing rate dial to backdown on the motor's speed when slower shutter speeds are used. The motor is allowed to drive full speeds when 125th and higher speeds are used. If a 60th or an 8th or 4th speeds are used then the selector has to be in the correct position to not drive the camera advance too fast.

I would think that the electronics in the D 700 must compensate for selection of shutter speeds that are set too slow for a quick framing rate. To get 8 FPS you need the shutter speed that doesn't delay all of that motion to happen. I used pretty fast shutter settings to get sharp images of my son's cross country races.

The camera will flash sync at a 250th of a second and actually will sync at a 320th. That can stop motion with flash duration. Kind of depends on what the goals are. The motor easily goes full speed at those settings.

-Dai

It's not a particularly simple question to answer, as it turns out. Although clearly the shutter has to stay closed enough to run that frame rate, there's a lot more going on - the mirror has to flip up and down, the AF has to readjust, the lens has to settle the AF, fire the shutter, process the image, drain the buffer .... in practice it takes more like 85 milliseconds to do all this stuff even on a D3/D3s, and that's even assuming no AF readjustment between frames. This is exactly the reason that the D3/D3s run at 11 fps. (11 fps = 90ms cycle time.) The D700 has similar, but different timings for most of these items.

The other way to know, by shooting and having the experience, is also difficult to come by. That's because you'd have to be hitting that limit and also realizing it. In practice, with sports (the usual reason for 8 fps), one is shooting at a shutter speed that is much faster than that necessary to hit 5 or 8 fps, and therefore won't encounter the limit. I can say this much: on a D3, I'm sure that I've shot at 1/60th and not noticed the frame rate limitation. I have also shot 1/30th - panning for maximum background blur - and I do not recall having a frame rate limitation, but then again, it's entirely possible that I hit the problem and didn't notice. 1/60th is 16ms and 1/30th is obviously 32ms, both far enough below the 85ms cycle time that it is possible that the shutter wasn't the limitation.

In practical terms, don't worry about it.

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