I got a response from Nikon service reasonably quickly, however the response itself was fairly useless. They couldn't give me a price for doing any work without seeing the camera and said that if the focus screen wasn't a Nikon one (as far as I know Nikon don't make split prism screens for their DSLRs) they may replace it during the service.
So, next stop was to try and find a local camera repair shop and see what they could do. I phoned RCCR as they're pretty close by and had a very helpful conversation with Ray. Whilst he couldn't actually help me he was very happy to explain in detail what might be going wrong.
Conveniently I've also currently got a trial version of Lightroom 3 installed. I'd read that this allows you to do tethered shooting, and sure enough after changing the USB setting on my camera, tethered shooting worked without a hitch. This allowed me to check the focus of my photos at 1:1 on my laptop as I took them, which is a lot more useful than looking at them on the back of the camera.
Ray was worried that the mirror adjustment might noticably mess with the autofocus (contrary to what I'd read previously). It seems that he was right, thanks to the tethered shooting I saw a noticable change in sharpness as I moved the mirror adjustment this time.
According to Ray I should have seen a difference in focus performance after taking the existing shims out. The first time I took them out and put them in a few times and didn't really notice anything changing. This time I thought that instead of using the autofocus and seeing how far misaligned the split prism was I would try focusing with the split prism and see if I could tell the difference in the pictures. This turned out to be a much better idea and showed that focusing with some thick paper shims I made was clearly worse than no shims.
Unfortunately because in both cases the focus was off in the same direction I have to conclude that either my camera just can't do accurate manual focus, or that I've got a duff focus screen - if it's thicker than the existing screen plus the shims then it's probably going to be impossible to use.
So for now I've re-installed the original screen and gone back to my mostly reliable autofocus. Drat.
Sunday 19 September 2010
Sunday 12 September 2010
Installing Drupal on a Mac
The Drupal site contains full instructions for both prerequisites and installation but somethings were not immediately clear to me and some of the documentation is fairly long so I thought I'd distill them here.
Install Apache - On a Mac you don't need to do this as it's already there, you just need to enable it in System preferences under Sharing -> Web Sharing.
Install MySql - You get the option of 32 bit or 64 bit installs. It seems that at the moment it's still safer to install the 32 bit version. I downloaded the dmg version and installed both packages (so MySql will start up automatically with the machine) and the preferences panel.
Install PHP - Again this is already installed on your Mac you just need to activate it.
Download Drupal and unzip it somewhere, (the Drupal instructions will link it to Apache later on).
Configure MySql (by default installed to /usr/local/mysql/bin). The following step by step instructions assume that MySql has only just been installed and has not been configured at all yet.
Log in as root:
mysql -u root
Then the following sets up a root user password:
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('secret_password');
Create a user for use by Drupal
CREATE USER 'drupal'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'another_password';
Create a database for use by Drupal
CREATE DATABASE drupalDb;
Allow the Drupal user to manipulate the Drupal database (note the ` characters that are not ')
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, LOCK TABLES, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON `drupalDb`.* TO 'drupal'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Quit MySql
\q
Follow the remaining installation instructions on the Drupal site.
The Mac specific instructions on the Drupal site are a bit mangled. This page explains how to set up virtual hosts more clearly:
http://drupal.org/node/238805
One important note here is that if you put your Drupal files somewhere non-standard then you could end up getting 403 errors. This page has some suggestions on how to fix things. Personally I just put the Drupal files in a subdirectory of /Library/WebServer/Documents.
Once that's all done you ought to be able to go to the virtual site you set up and see the drupal installation start page. From there it ought to be plain sailing.
But in my case it wasn't. A final couple of useful points:
- You'll probably get an error about the files directory. Just create the directory manually and give the _www group write access to it.
- If you're installing on Snow Leopard you'll probably get an error after entering the database details. To get around this, click on advanced options and change the host name from localhost to 127.0.0.1.
Install Apache - On a Mac you don't need to do this as it's already there, you just need to enable it in System preferences under Sharing -> Web Sharing.
Install MySql - You get the option of 32 bit or 64 bit installs. It seems that at the moment it's still safer to install the 32 bit version. I downloaded the dmg version and installed both packages (so MySql will start up automatically with the machine) and the preferences panel.
Install PHP - Again this is already installed on your Mac you just need to activate it.
Download Drupal and unzip it somewhere, (the Drupal instructions will link it to Apache later on).
Configure MySql (by default installed to /usr/local/mysql/bin). The following step by step instructions assume that MySql has only just been installed and has not been configured at all yet.
Log in as root:
mysql -u root
Then the following sets up a root user password:
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('secret_password');
Create a user for use by Drupal
CREATE USER 'drupal'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'another_password';
Create a database for use by Drupal
CREATE DATABASE drupalDb;
Allow the Drupal user to manipulate the Drupal database (note the ` characters that are not ')
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, LOCK TABLES, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON `drupalDb`.* TO 'drupal'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Quit MySql
\q
Follow the remaining installation instructions on the Drupal site.
The Mac specific instructions on the Drupal site are a bit mangled. This page explains how to set up virtual hosts more clearly:
http://drupal.org/node/238805
One important note here is that if you put your Drupal files somewhere non-standard then you could end up getting 403 errors. This page has some suggestions on how to fix things. Personally I just put the Drupal files in a subdirectory of /Library/WebServer/Documents.
Once that's all done you ought to be able to go to the virtual site you set up and see the drupal installation start page. From there it ought to be plain sailing.
But in my case it wasn't. A final couple of useful points:
- You'll probably get an error about the files directory. Just create the directory manually and give the _www group write access to it.
- If you're installing on Snow Leopard you'll probably get an error after entering the database details. To get around this, click on advanced options and change the host name from localhost to 127.0.0.1.
Saturday 11 September 2010
Manual Focus
I've been interested in getting a manual focus screen for my D300 for a while, but the price of the Katzeye screen has put me off. However, I recently found out that you can get focus screens from on eBay for a fraction of the price, so I thought I'd take the plunge.
I chose a 180 degree split, which just means that the split line is horizontal. That means that it's easiest and most accurate to focus on vertical lines and impossible to focus on horizontal lines. The other common types are:
Unfortunately, so far things have not gone to plan. Fitting the screen is in theory fairly simple. In practice the particular screen I have was about 1mm narrower than the original screen and so the wire clip holding it in slipped off one side and so didn't hold it as securely as I'd like. To counter this I removed the clip completely, bent it in slightly with some pliers, and then put it back. Not too hard but it shouldn't have been necessary and required some confidence.
Once securely fitted I tested the screen by setting the camera to autofocus and seeing if the screen agreed. It didn't. I half expected this as there were two shims between the original focus screen and camera body and I'd read guides that said to leave them in and other guides that said to take them out. So I tried removing one, then both shims. Unfortunately that didn't really help.
At this point I had to do some more research. One thing I learned is that with a 1.5mm allen key you can adjust the mirror resting position to a small degree by turning a small screw next to the bottom right hand corner of the mirror (as you look into the camera). This helped and got the focus quite close, but I couldn't adjust it far enough. Also please do note that I later found a few warnings about how this adjustment might mess up your auto focus, however, I found just as many notes saying that people had done this without any problems. For the record I have not seen any problems with my auto focus but haven't tested it thoroughly.
Finally after more research I've found a few people saying that modern DSLRs are simply not set up for manual focus at all accurately (although mostly they're not far off). Given the general lack of complaints about these screens I think in my case I may have got unlucky and got a camera that is so far away from accurate manual focus that the small adjustments available to me aren't enough.
So, I've admitted defeat and emailed Nikon Service to see what they can do adjust the focusing and how much it will cost. More details to follow as things progress...
I chose a 180 degree split, which just means that the split line is horizontal. That means that it's easiest and most accurate to focus on vertical lines and impossible to focus on horizontal lines. The other common types are:
- 45 degree single split. This is the same as the 180 degree but with the split line at 45 degrees. One of these screens will let you focus on both horizontal and vertical lines but with less accuracy. For maximum accuracy you'd need to find a 45 degree line.
- 45 degree double split. As the name suggests this screen has two splits. Apparently the purpose of this is to help get the sensor plane aligned with what you need to focus on and is mainly useful for photography flat objects like coins and books.
Unfortunately, so far things have not gone to plan. Fitting the screen is in theory fairly simple. In practice the particular screen I have was about 1mm narrower than the original screen and so the wire clip holding it in slipped off one side and so didn't hold it as securely as I'd like. To counter this I removed the clip completely, bent it in slightly with some pliers, and then put it back. Not too hard but it shouldn't have been necessary and required some confidence.
Once securely fitted I tested the screen by setting the camera to autofocus and seeing if the screen agreed. It didn't. I half expected this as there were two shims between the original focus screen and camera body and I'd read guides that said to leave them in and other guides that said to take them out. So I tried removing one, then both shims. Unfortunately that didn't really help.
At this point I had to do some more research. One thing I learned is that with a 1.5mm allen key you can adjust the mirror resting position to a small degree by turning a small screw next to the bottom right hand corner of the mirror (as you look into the camera). This helped and got the focus quite close, but I couldn't adjust it far enough. Also please do note that I later found a few warnings about how this adjustment might mess up your auto focus, however, I found just as many notes saying that people had done this without any problems. For the record I have not seen any problems with my auto focus but haven't tested it thoroughly.
Finally after more research I've found a few people saying that modern DSLRs are simply not set up for manual focus at all accurately (although mostly they're not far off). Given the general lack of complaints about these screens I think in my case I may have got unlucky and got a camera that is so far away from accurate manual focus that the small adjustments available to me aren't enough.
So, I've admitted defeat and emailed Nikon Service to see what they can do adjust the focusing and how much it will cost. More details to follow as things progress...
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