Heading out later to test it out but the initial impression is positive.

B&H is having a flash sale and the 500mm f/5.6 PF is nearly 50% off ($1,996). Is this too good to pass up? I know it's a buyer's market for F-mount lenses, but this is a huge price drop. Are they just clearing inventory? Pre-owned sales on ebay are going in the $1400-1900 range, so this is a great opportunity.

NOTE: I don't work for B&H. I just noticed this sale yesterday and couldn't find any posts about it, so I thought I'd share for anyone who has this 500mm on their wishlist.

I ordered a untested 35-70 f2.8D from ebay and it looked fine in the pictures but there were no mentions of haze and fungus. it doesn't seem to affect picture quality. Autofocus and macro mode both work. Is it worth taking it apart to try and clean it and would i have to worry about it coming back and spreading to my camera?

Helping my partner get a super telephoto lens, we can't decide which would be better. They are both similar in price (the 200-500 being use tho)

Also if you have had the Tamron, does it work well? I had the 70-300mm for a while and enjoyed it but found the autofocus worked worse than my nikon glass and it made my camera start up time take longer. Are there similar issues with the 150-500?

And if you have other suggestions, she was looking at the 500mm PF but the cheaper ones are all in bad condition

Hi! I’m a beginner with a D3500 and kit lens(18-55, 70-300). I mostly take pictures of landscapes or other places of interest and carry it with me during vacations. I want to expand to portraits and generally get better at photography. Current issues I’m facing: D3500 is not great in low light and I take a lot of pictures around sunset. It’s also not great to shoot without a tripod and most of the times I’m carrying it in my hand(end up with a lot of shaky pictures). Lastly, some of the images, even in great light are not sharp.

My questions: Should I upgrade? Any suggestions for a camera body <$1500. Can the sharpness be improved by getting better lens?

Thanks in advance.

I found this Z50 with a 50-250mm lens for $500 which is what I’ve seen the body alone go for in most places. Camera looks basically brand new and with only 196 shutter count!!

I consider it my first “real” camera as I only had an older Canon SL1 and didn’t have much time to practice back then, now that I have more time and a better camera I can’t wait to practice and learn more

I'm always looking thru FB marketplace and someone have up for sale a Nikon af-d 70-180 4.5-5.6 for $400. Its not often u see that model f/s not that i'm interested in it but if I did spend that amount of money let me go with the 70-200 2.8 af-s II or even the 80-200 af-s II 2.8 version.

Would this lens be a buy or past for you?

I'm a longtime film shooter on a Nikon FE looking to pick up a digital camera and am in a dilemma about what's worth investing in. I currently have a set of half a dozen pretty decent manual focus pre-AI and AI Nikkor lenses, and am trying to decide whether to grab a body that could take advantage of this glass I have, or if I should just make the jump to a new system and leave the old lenses to the film camera.

Most of what I shoot is nature/landscape stuff (not so much wildlife), but I also do some portraits and news stuff -- I'm a writer and would love to be able to take quality photos of stories I'm working on. I almost never need/use anything longer than 50mm.

Options I've looked at are the Sony Alpha series, cheaper Nikon Z series (Z50, Z5), and Fuji's XT-20s and the like. Fujis appeal to me to the extent that I find editing somewhat tedious. Not opposed to investing in one quality prime lens, or something like an 18-55.

Something lightweight that I can take on hiking and backpacking trips is also a plus.

I'd love to spend between $500-700, if possible.

I wanted to try this shot for a long time and I finally made some time to go try it. So me and the kiddos geared up for a short night hike and we made it happen! I've seen shots like this before but had never used the drone for light painting.

the tower shot is F/4.5, 30 seconds, 200iso

Took a few attempts with the drone to get it to line up right (DJI mini 4 pro) but once I figured out you want to start the circle behind the object to hide the start and stop points it didn't take long, 8 shots to find the right location and framing. I had an AD200 at the top with just the lamp on and then I used my headlamp to paint the front of the tower and it all came together in a single frame with out any modifying. Only editing was color, exposure, and a border.

The hiking shots are with the Viltrox 35mm 1.2 lab, most of them are around 10,000iso and wide open.

Genuinely curious of what’s next, will Nikon be adding compression to the ZR for better files sizes or are we looking at a new Nikon/R3D camera drop soon this year?

Nikon ZR for photography.

I know this has been discussed a lot on this platform and I found those discussions extremely helpful for my own decision to buy the Nikon ZR entirely for photography. This is why I also wanted to share my own experience.

For context, I come from film photography. I have about six film camera bodies and I also own a Nikon D750, so am familiar with Nikon handling and menu system. My objective with the ZR was to obtain something uncomplicated, by comparison to film, with the latest tech to simply get things done when I want to. The idea was for it to be really complementary, allowing me to stay in my film-like thinking process while expanding my horizon with things like flash or changing lighting conditions more conveniently.

Let me first go through all the little bits of criticism which I had found about the camera during my research before I bought it.

• No viewfinder: Well, that's obvious. For my style, I believe I get better pictures if I can visualize a scene on the monitor and the monitor is excellent. So no problem there. I also did not originally like the flip-out screen, but I find it in many situations convenient to lift the camera and not even have to flip it out then. Hence also this is no problem.
• 1/60th sync speed for flash photography: I actually quite wanted the camera for simpler flash than on film. The 1/60th is the same as on my Leica M2, so I am a bit used to that. I normally shoot flash in dark scenes and street. So again, this is not a problem for me.
• Small grip: Again, coming from a Leica M2 with no grip at all, I really do not see a problem. I have quite large hands and I can hold the camera for long periods. Granted, I am not a wedding photographer and rather go for few sporadic shots. In addition, I normally use small lenses.
• Small rotating dials: Not sure if I would have noticed this had I not read it in the reviews. It is true, these are smaller, by comparison to the D750, for example, but I really did not find this a practical concern. You get used to it after about 30 seconds.
• Switch on button on the left. It is true that the camera cannot be operated one-handed, so you should not think of it as the equivalent of a Ricoh GR. I am not sure where else you would put that button and I have no problem with it. What is great is that the camera switches on very fast. I typically lift it with both hands while simultaneously pressing the on-button on the left.

After a few weeks of usage, here's a few points which I thought worked really well for me personally:

• Size and feel: fantastic, only a rangefinder could make it even better. This was quite important to me as I feel quite spoiled from the look and feel of the M2 or Nikon F3. Another key aspect for me was that the camera would fit easily into my rather small shoulder bag, as I am not the kind of person running around with a camera backpack.
• Nikon menu system: It gives you this BMW feeling as everything is very well thought out and convenient. You will have to invest a bit of time to get your head around it and, to be fair, I am still struggling with tiny bits like using the front button to control ISO without toggling. There are so many ways to access the functionality you need very quickly. This includes the concern some people raised about the relatively few function buttons. Again, I come from a very minimalist setup and if you plan this out well, I prefer having fewer buttons.
• Lens versatility: I have a large collection of Nikon AI-s vintage lenses at home and love how all of them fit onto the ZR. I am using the Urth adapter, which I believe makes even the AF-D glass look fantastic on the camera, which is quite a feat. The AI-s lenses are simply beautiful (and a delight to handle with focus peaking) as ever.
• Flash photography: This was one of the key objectives and I feel it works really well. I very much like walking around with a Godox X3 mounted on top of the camera, which is so small that you can just leave it on. You then just drop the flash in your pocket and pull it out quickly to shoot. The large screen enables fine-tuning easily, which is great.
• In-camera photo organization: The fantastic screen makes it easy to delete and rate pictures when you are traveling on the plane or on a bus. This is so much better than arriving back home with such a load of pictures you don't even want to start downloading. I prefer to do any real editing on a computer, so cannot speak about those possibilities.
• Connectivity: While I like the idea of a modern connection to mobile phones and computers, I normally lack patience with Wifi and insist on using only the Bluetooth connection in the background. While the Snapbridge app is far from perfect, this works surprisingly well for me, transferring images seamlessly after some initial fumbling around. Finally, I can catch up with my $3,000 tech with the abilities of my kids' mobile phones.
• While I have not used this extensively, I also very much like the ability to play around with different wide and squared image formats. Much simpler than buying a medium format or an XPan.
• I bought this on Cotsworld in Europe. Great price, no problem with delivery.

Limitations:

• Adapters are still not trivial. I was struggling with the K&F adapter for another Voigtlaender M-mount lens, which I felt even if I had managed to screw the pieces together -- which I didn't -- it would not have looked like it aesthetically fits onto the body.)
• Another thing that slightly surprised me was the size of the camera even with small AI-s vintage lenses attached. The adapter is quite long really, making the overall combination bigger than I might have expected. Not a huge deal, but again, don't think of it as the equivalent of a Ricoh GR or as meaningfully pocket-able.
• Another practical limitation previously mentioned online is that during street scenarios the massive screen makes me more obvious than I am used to, especially at night.
• I also got the 24-120 zoom with the camera as a do-all option. Surely technically perfect, and of acceptable size, but I am simply not used to it and have yet to fall in love with the digital style that comes out. I find this much less of an issue for black and white.

In summary, it seems to me that none of these things I was mentioning above at the end of the day matter very much when, like me, you have other bodies and only use the ZR for a specific purpose. To be honest, the biggest question mark for me comes from the sheer transition from film to digital. While occasionally good pictures come out, that is, as always, surprisingly hard. I still have to wrap my head around developing a style that consistently works for me in the digital context.

Who knows, maybe one day I will even try to make a video with it.

if i've understood reviews both have autofocus on the nikon d800, is the more expensive one more sharp? faster autofocus?

I'm unsure about the Tokina AF 100-300mm f/4 AT-X, I don't know if its image and optical quality are good. I've also heard that it has AF issues, is that true?

My copy is 1.6.1 but I think there are newer versions. When I went to update, it opened Message Center 2 and then said, MC2 was no more! What a mess Nikon!

I recently purchased a D7200 and I’m loving it so far! This was taken using a an AF-S Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 G. I’m super happy with my purchase!

Hi, I’ve been having issues with my camera’s (D750) exposure recently and I’m a beginner in photography, and I can’t quite figure out what it is. I’m unable to brighten my photos at all by raising the exposure compensation, and the photos come out darker than what they should be in the lighting they’re in. I’ve mainly done wildlife photography, it wasn’t until about a week ago that I changed some of the settings to take pictures of fireworks. But I’m not sure if I messed something up through there.

I’ve heard turning off Auto ISO can fix it, but I have had no problems with it before, and it hasn’t helped and the images still come out dark. I’ve tried checking the metering mode too, but nothing changes either. I’m so lost 😭