| May
28th 1999.
Plugged the first Velvia slide film into the F5. Hoping for
the best - expecting the worst :-) Was a lovely evening here
and I had some interesting-light-situations around the river
Breg late evening.
| |
| Flowers
on a field. St.Märgen, the Black Forest, Germany,
May 1999. Nikon F5, Nikkor AF 20mm/2.8D on Fujichrome
Sensia II 100.
|
June
1st 1999 - or the second summary of my "first" mistakes
The F5 starts to behave strange :-(((. Mainly the
following strangies have happened throughout the last days:
1.
When switching from (S)ingle film transport to timer and then
back to (S), it has happened that ERR blinks in the LCD's
and then the mirror locks wide open for some time after I've
been trying to take a new picture. Turning off and on the
camera forced the film to be transported one frame and the
ERR indication vanished.
2.
After inserting a roll and loading it, the film transport
stops halway, ERR blinking in the LCDs. I rewind the film
manually and redo the operation. It now works ok and the film
counter indicates "1". The battery indicator is
on half, indicating that there is still some power left in
the batteries.
I
slowly start to think that the camera needs to be repaired
and feel a tad sad about it. After repeatingly trying to load
a new roll of film, always ending up with ERR blinking, I
of a sudden see that the battery power indicator blinks. Ohoh.
Rapidly switching batteries and the "problem" is
gone. I have now found out that:
1.
Don't simply trust the battery indicator.
2. Switch batteries more or less directly when the "half
good" indicator is displayed, don't wait for it to start
blinking.
It
looks like the coreless motors in the F5 have quite an extreme
rush current, i.e. the initial current needed for the motors
is very high (seems like it was the film transport motor that
mainly was responsible for the voltage drop), causing the
voltage to shortly - though rapidly - drop below a state where
the camera doesn't function properly. This could very well
be an odd behaviour of the alkaline batteries which came with
the camera (not a brand that I know of, yellow colored, US
made). I guess they reach a nasty, high inner resistance when
worn down, causing this behaviour. Btw, I am into buying the
rechargable NiMH accumulator pack (MN-30) together with the
MH-30 charger. |
