I am asking this question for a friend who does not have internet access. She has a Nikon D1 and wants to use it fo exposure check before she starts burning film. She has a full complement of Nikon lenses, thus the D1.

So the question is if she is using 200 speed film and sets the D1 to emulate 200ASA, will the exposure that she sees from the digital images be th same as what she gets on film? In particular, it seems that setting the white balance on the D1 would change the exposure reading. How does one overcome this potential problem (and any other problems that we have not thought of yet)?

Thank you in advance. I will print out any responses for my friend.

-- Peter English (drenglish@hotmail.com), June 30, 2000

Answers

So far two people have answered this question by insulting the people who asked it. If you don't have anything meaningful to say, your response will be deleted. The person Peter is asking the question for obviously has a film camera as well, so there is no use in saying she should get an exposure meter and burn film. The point of the question would seem to be if the D1 could be used for quick "digital proofs" of a lighting setup before burning film, not to be used as a meter.

-- Brad Hutcheson (bhutcheson@iname.com), July 02, 2000.

Knowing more, I'd have to say there would be no use in this. Checking the lighting setup via polaroid is useful in a studio setting to see if you have the correct ratios, etc. I don't do that type of work, but I doubt you could actually use it to check exposure, just the light pattern. I don't see why that couldn't be done with a digital camera, which is sort of what the question seemed to be about to me.

The problem with this specific application is that you don't have any control over the light when taking pictures of wildlife from a blind. The Nikon F5 probably has the most sophisticated in camera meter there is. Set it on Program AE, Aperture or Shutter Priority AE, and chances are that it will give better results in such a situation than dialing in the exposure manually will. Most of today's slide films work well when exposed at the ISO rating on the box. Rating the E.I. diferently is usually more of a matter of taste than absolute nesessity, so the only way to find out is to shoot a few rolls.

-- Brad Hutcheson (bhutcheson@iname.com), July 05, 2000.

No disrespect meant Brad, but I don't see mention of lighting set ups in this question and, anlthough I read the question several times, it really sounds like the D1 is intended to be used as a meter.

While I can't answer the question, I do have a thought. Photogrpahers spend a lot of time fine tuning their metering and exposure to a particular film. When they switch films--even of the same ISO--they will frequently meter differently. It seems unlikely that the D1 would be very well matched to any particular film and while I'm sure a person could learn to correlate the two and make effective use of the D1 in this manner it would be just as easy, lighter, and much cheaper to do the same with a conventional meter.

As for your idea of using it to check lighting set-ups, Brad, if the D1 works with strobes, it seems like it would be as effective as poloroids and in the end maybe cheaper.

Wish your friend luck--I would be interested to know how it works Peter.

-- Mark Meyer (mark@photo-mark.com), July 04, 2000.

Didn't mean to set off the folks who think they need to be nasty. Thanks for being nice, Brad and Mark.

OK, there really is a friend (very loosly defined), she is a major contributor to an organization I work with, and I have been assigned the task of answering her questions (because I am the only one who has any interest in photography). She has roughly $50k of Nikon equipment and fancies herself a photographer. She was told by the guys at B&H that she could use the D1 to "check her exposure just like people do with polaroids." To me this makes no sense, especially with the batch variation in pro color slide film. She takes mostly nature shots through huge lenses from blinds. She thinks that she is going to save film by using this digital camera. Her grasp of technology is not strong.

I was hoping that someone else could help me with this, because I am not in a position to tell her that she doesn't know what she's talking about. Is there any potential benefit of the D1? Personally, I cannot think of anything that she can do with the D1 to take better slide photos with her stable of F5s. She has no interest in digital photography (yeah, I know, then why buy a $5000 digital camera... I cannot answer that except to say that she has a tremendous amount of money)

Thanks for the help.

-Peter

-- Peter English (drenglish@hotmail.com), July 04, 2000.

peter, if i offended you and/or your friend, please accept my appologies. in retrospect, i was a little out of hand.

back to the question at hand, i still don't think how she can benefit from using the D1 as a "digital polaroid". especially if she is shooting slide film, each film behaving so differently than others rated at the same ASA. and i don't think you can simulate push or pull with the D1... again, sorry for being a jerk.

-- howard shen (hshen@lsm.org), July 05, 2000.

I have both a D1 and an F5 and have compared their meters. I can state from experience that I have never seen the meters on my particular camera differ.

The F5 and D1 meters behave identically from what I have seen.

I assume your question is: Can I use the D1's exposure histogram to fine tune my film exposure? The answer is: maybe, probably not. The dynamic range of the digital imager is not the same as the range of a camera loaded with equivalent speed film. Consequently, areas that are full white or black on the D1 histogram may record differently on film. Generally speaking, the D1 will record a wider range than equivalent film. As a result the uncorrected D1 exposures tend to appear darker than identically metered film.

You mention the white balance adjustment. That will indeed affect exposure. More significantly, the D1 has a custom setting for contrast which significantly affects exposure. The film equivalent of this would be low or high contrast film. Your D1 manual explains how to set these things, but you will have to actually take some pictures and evaluate the results to see what they do.

The problem you will have is that even though these controls mimic the behaviour of different film types the simple fact is that the digital image system behaves in a subtly different manner. Making "fine tune" film exposure decisions based upon this will be frustrating.

You asked if the D1's digital image will reflect what film would record in the same circumstance. The answer: mostly . . . I have used the F5 and D1 side by side. The midpoint of both exposures will be the same. As a rule, the D1 will record greater detail in both highlight and shadow areas than film, though the film records more detail in its midpoint range. Also remember that focal length is magnified by 1.5 in the D1.

My comments about the D1's limited utility here assume you want to fine tune exposure and have an F5 for a film camera. If you had, for example, a medium format camera with no meter, the D1 will make an excellent meter for that with a little experimentation. Still, it won't do anything in that context that a good lightmeter won't do except the color matrix stuff.

Feel free to contact me if you have more specific questions as I use both cameras quite a lot.

-- John Robison (johnrobison@attglobal.net), July 06, 2000.