Other Photography Forums?

As much as I love this site, the user base here isn't big enough to get obscure questions answered, usually.

I just tried joining Fred Miranda forums and the site would never let me past the scramble word at the end. I tried ten times (literally) and every time it said the word I entered didn't match the word displayed, which is total bullshit but I don't know what else to do as there doesn't appear to be any way to contact site administrators unless you're registered.

Nikonians.org wants $ to be able to do anything on their site.

Any other good sites out there that would have a wealth of Nikon nerds?

I'll ask the question here, too, just in case someone's run into this situation before:

I have a D7000 body. I rented a 300 f4 AFS lens and TC14EII for the weekend. With the TC in place, the lens would not autofocus. Worked fine with just the lens.

I took it back to the rental shop and they tried a different TC with the same results.

They also tried it on their rental D7000 body and same results.

They tried it on an F100 body and it worked fine.

I have never heard that the D7000 wouldn't work with the TC + 300 f4 combo. In fact, that's a pretty popular combo for getting decently long reach at a relatively low price point. Nikon says it should work.

Anyone seen something like this before? The only thing we didn't try was a different lens, 'cause they didn't have one. Could it be just the lens, even though it did work on a different body?

http://newschoolofphotography.com/

Weird. That camera can't AF at a combined f/8 but that lens and TC should only be equal to f/5.6. I would actually expect that to happen with the 2x but not the 1.4.

Nikoncafe is OK. A little bit of a culture shock coming from places like TGR (everybody's too cheerful and friendly) but it's a decently knowledgable community.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lonnie

http://newschoolofphotography.com/

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And unfortunate circle jerk, where everyone placates everyone else's shitty photography, akin to alpinezone or epicski.


Buy a Canon and try photography-on-the-net.

You could probably hit up the Fred Miranda Facebook page and see if you get a response there. It's a pretty good forum overall. That's all I got though, I know nothing about Nikons, but that's a pretty big strike against that camera if it's truly programmed like that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by iscariot

And unfortunate circle jerk, where everyone placates everyone else's shitty photography, akin to alpinezone or epicski.

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No, you're thinking of this place.

http://photocamel.com/forum/

Willie, you might try asking at this place too..

http://www.getdpi.com/forum/nikon/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lonnie

No, you're thinking of this place.

http://photocamel.com/forum/

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No. I meant exactly what I said...which is why I said it.

Maybe try http://dgrin.com/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by systemoverblow'd

Weird. That camera can't AF at a combined f/8 but that lens and TC should only be equal to f/5.6. I would actually expect that to happen with the 2x but not the 1.4.

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It's not that it couldn't achieve focus, it's that it didn't even try. No response from the lens at all, as if the AF/M button had been set to M, and yeah, max aperture with that combo was f5.6. I've been reading about guys with D300s that are using the 1.4 *and* the 1.7 TC with this lens and getting excellent results.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hitek79

You could probably hit up the Fred Miranda Facebook page and see if you get a response there. It's a pretty good forum overall. That's all I got though, I know nothing about Nikons, but that's a pretty big strike against that camera if it's truly programmed like that.

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Thanks, I'll try the fb route. The weird thing is, I'm in contact with a guy on another site I belong to who has this exact combo and he doesn't have any issues. Really likes it and gets some very nice pics with it. One thing that's different about his setup that I never even thought to try is he has his AF decoupled from the shutter release button. On his camera, AF is only activated when he pushes the AE-L/AF-L button. I'm not sure what the benefit to that is, but if it's a workaround for this lens I could set it up as a custom user setting and put the camera in that mode when I have that lens on.

Only other WAG is that the lens the shop had is one of the very first production runs of this model lens. This lens hasn't been changed since early 2002 and the lens they had is a 2002 vintage. Maybe there's something different about newer copies...?

Lonnie & others - thanks for the suggestions on alternate sites, I'll check into them. I looked at Newschoolofphotography and their tech oriented forum is pretty dead but suppose it can't hurt to ask.

Using AF-ON instead of the shutter release is awesome, it took me a while to be convinced to try it, and a while longer before I got used to it, but I can't do it the normal way now. The great thing about it is you can leave the camera on AF-C all the time, and then if you want to single focus before a shot, you tap AF-ON, if you want to track, you hold it down, and if you want to hold focus you just don't use it. It's AF-S, AF-C, and AF-Lock all in one easy, natural motion.

Willie-that combo should autofocus with the 1.4, 1.7 and 2.0 TC's. Did you try cleaning the contacts?

No but as mentioned in my op the shop tried two different TCs and no luck. then they tried it on an F100 body and it worked. Then they tried it on their d7000 body and again it didn't work. While its possible two different TCs wouldn't work on either d7000 body but would work on an F100 due to dirty contacts I think it's pretty unlikely.

I'd be interested in how this works out since I was thinking of the same setup for my 7000.