Re: PHOTOFORUM digest 3658

[Don Lintner <lintner@xxxxxxx>]

I actually shoot with the D2H. I've had one here at work since last May and
when the price dropped, I went out and bought one for myself. Its a lot more
camera than just fast. Very well built, great ergonomics from my point of
view and excellent image quality with good color in most situations and good
image sharpness and detail resolution. The autofocus is very fast and accurate
and the battery life is excellent. The two big issues I see are the LCD screen
is too light so you need to use the histogram to get a read on proper exposure
and it doesn't like underexposure. So, the two problems can compound each
other to give real problems. But, its great if you make sure your exposures
are on and don't believe what you see on the LCD, look at the histogram.
And, the matrix metering is excellent under all conditions except backlight.
The flash system works very well with the SB-800 on camera and I've used
the wireless flash with 2 additional SB-800s on stands with excellent control
and results. I believe Nikon went back to the mechanical shutter - similar
to that in the F5 - because it is rated at 150,000 cycles while I've heard
that the electronic shutter in the earlier D series cameras tended to fail
much sooner. I can live with this trade off. In fact, with this and other
digital cameras, I find using studio flash that I can't shoot at 1/250  and
my Wein wireless strobe trigger. I get underexposure on one edge of the frame.
This happens with the D2H to a lesser degree and with a Kodak DCS760. slow
the speed down to 1/125 and all is well. I've heard this happens with Pocket
Wizard remotes as well.

We have an HP5000 42" inkjet printer and I have done numerous 24 x 36 " prints
from this camera interpolating up in Photoshop. The detail and image quality
is very good at 200 ISO and produces prints that are useable at this size
even when shot at 1600 ISO: noise goes up and detail and fine shading decreases
but the prints are still better than anything I've ever been able to do from
this speed 35mm film. these high speed enlargements were done of stage productions
for our theater department and they were thrilled with them so they are good
enough for me...

But don't take my word for it, here are some other reviews by people I feel
are more accurate in their appraisal of photo equipment than Ken Rockwell.
  http://www.naturfotograf.com/index2.html
 and  http://www.photo-miracles.com/D2H/
and http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6447-6490

Don

Subject:

D2H; Your thoughts...

From:

Srinivasa <photo@xxxxxxxxxx>

Date:

Wed, 26 Jan 2005 08:43:07 -0800 (PST)

To:

List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

All,

Sorry if this is already discussed here before, but I
recently purchased D2H due to the price drop and
wondering if anyone on the forum has any good
experience using the camera. I actually waited for D2X
but the price seems bit too high for my budget. 

Since D2H is 4Megapixel camera, I am also wondering if
anyone on the group has any experience to share with
the enlargements with this camera. 

Pardon me if this topic is out of scope for this
forum.

Best regards,
Srinivasa Regeti
  

-- 
Don Lintner
Graphics/Photo Program Manager
Instructional Technology Support
University of Wisconsin-Parkside
900 Wood Road, P.O. Box 2000
Kenosha, Wisconsin 53141-2000
262-595-2286
FAX 262-595-2557
lintner@xxxxxxx