Good Morning Everyone...

I recently picked up a used D700 here on Nikonians. It has about 30,000 shots on it. It's very clean and appears to be in good working order. I used it last weekend for some outdoor sports and encountered a problem. It appears to be over exposing in Aperture Priority mode by about 1 stop. My first body is also a D700 and is spot on with exposure, but the new one is not. I check exposure compensation and that appears to be okay so I'm not really sure what's going on. Does anyone have any ideas?

Regards,
Chris

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."
-Ansel Adams

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I would try a reset to factory defaults.

Tristan

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Okay, so I reset the entire camera's setting, did a cold restart and went through the entire shooting menu and custom settings menu. To this point the camera is still a little shaky. Would a good CLA be in order? Could this fix it? It seems to work okay in manual mode, but I really prefer to use aperture priority under day light conditions.

I'm at a loss as to what is causing my problems with the metering in the camera. It does appear to be happening across multiple lenses too.

The camera has only about 35,000 frames through it so I'm don't think it's high miles.

Any ideas?

Regards,
Chris

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."
-Ansel Adams

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Check that the camera is not set to bracketing.
It happened to me by accident and I was going nuts until I wore my glasses and noticed the BKT icon in the Control Panel (window atop)



My Custom Setting e5 was set to Flash Only so it only happened when I shot with a speedlight.
I always had the first shot all washed out.

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Unfortunately I checked that too and it is not the problem. I think it might be time to send it in for a CLA. Maybe it just needs a good calibration.

Regards,
Chris

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."
-Ansel Adams

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I'm a little late to the party, but here's my two cents. I complained heavily when I first purchased my D700 that it overexposed shots. Almost all my shots were overexposed and I had to use the exposure compensation to -.7 - -1.0 which I thought was ridiculous. I even went into the custom settings and made it permanent, but quickly took it off because my exposures were all over the map.

What I finally found out, after 2 years, is that if you shoot in Center Weighted metering instead of Matrix Metering you'll get the exposures you're looking for. Also if you set your ADR to low instead of auto you'll get "better" exposures.

For what it's worth I still can't get over how many exposures people have on their cameras. I've had my camera for 2 years and I'm pretty sure I'm still well under 15,000 exposures. I come from the film days where every shot counted since I only had a max of 12 or 36 exposures (depending on the camera being used).

Good luck and congrats on your new camera.

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>
>What I finally found out, after 2 years, is that if you shoot
>in Center Weighted metering instead of Matrix Metering you'll
>get the exposures you're looking for. Also if you set your ADR
>to low instead of auto you'll get "better"
>exposures.
>

I agree with using center weighed. I get better exposures and in a little test I just ran matrix was 1 stop over.

Len

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You might check to see if you have the latest firmware, or upgrade -- you can get the firmware free at nikonusa.com. There was a D700 firmware release within the last year and one of the fixes addressed overexposure in some situations. However, I did not experience overexposure before or after on my D700, so this is just a suggestion.

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I wouldn't worry about it. Mine does the same thing. So if I'm going to use matrix metering I just underexpose by a stop or less.

Bob

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Thanks for the replies everyone. I've checked each thing mentioned and when matched up with my other D700 it still shoots between +2/3 and +1. I called APS in Chicago and they said they can recalibrate it if I send it in for a CLA. I think that's what I'll do. My other D700 was in about 11 months ago and has been spot on since. I think it'd be worth the expense.

Typically I'd shoot M anyway (then it doesn't matter), but under daylight conditions where exposure changes constantly I have trouble keeping two cameras strait when double slinging.

Regards,
Chris

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."
-Ansel Adams

Visit my Nikonians gallery.