D50 w/o DOF...work around?

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Tom (was aName) - 17 Dec 2005 05:45 GMT

Hi all,
The D50 fits my skill level, budget, and hands pretty well, and I am all
set to spend some $ - but I as I am interested in photography as art, I
suspect I might miss the DOF preview. So, what are my work around
options, other then the D70s? Does the LCD help? Can I buy a primary
lens with an aperture ring and stop-down myself? or ??

Thanks,
Tom

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Scott W - 17 Dec 2005 06:23 GMT

> Hi all,
> The D50 fits my skill level, budget, and hands pretty well, and I am all
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> Thanks,
> Tom

Set the aperture, take a test photo and then view it to see it you have
too much, too little or the right amount of DOF. The preview gets
pretty dark with higher f-numbers anyway.

Scott

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Paul Furman - 17 Dec 2005 18:17 GMT

> ...I as I am interested in photography as art, I
> suspect I might miss the DOF preview.

I seldom use mine on a D70, as mentioned it gets dark so hard to see
anyways.

> So, what are my work around
> options, other then the D70s? Does the LCD help?

The LCD is good for evaluating the look and size of out of focus circles
in the background but not so good for evaluating sharpness on a D70 it
doesn't go to full zoom.

> Can I buy a primary
> lens with an aperture ring and stop-down myself? or ??

No this won't work. Only very ancient lenses work that way & those would
need some kind of adapter and wouldn't meter. Modern lenses only stop
down at the moment of taking the exposure and a microchip is needed to
tell the camera what the range of the aperture is for calculating metering.

If you have the luxury of tethering a laptop to the camera with Nikon's
$100 Capture software, that's an extraordinary way to see how your
images are coming out. I have an old tripod and I put some brackets on
it for holding a laptop, mostly for doing time lapse movies but it's
really amazing how much more you can see of the image full size. You can
control all the camera's settings from the computer, experimenting for
just the right effect. If nothing else this is a great way to learn.

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Paul Furman
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Tom (was aName) - 18 Dec 2005 07:45 GMT

(Top quoting :-O) ... Thanks both for your information...I'll take DOF
preview off my "Please-NO-regrets" list and I like the notion of using
the "laptop-viewfinder" for learning and near real time tweaking.

- Tom

>> ...I as I am interested in photography as art, I suspect I might miss
>> the DOF preview.
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
> needed to tell the camera what the range of the aperture is for
> calculating metering.

Yep, that was my guess, having read enough to suspect, but without
experience to know what I might be missing.

> If you have the luxury of tethering a laptop to the camera with
> Nikon's $100 Capture software, that's an extraordinary way to see how
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> computer, experimenting for just the right effect. If nothing else
> this is a great way to learn.

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