Smooth Aperture Changes with D800

R

rossfinnie

Member
I have a feeling this is going to make me feel like a bit of a moron once I find out the amazingly obvious answer, but do any of you know how I can achieve smooth aperture transitions on the D800 using the aperture rings on AI lenses? Power aperture doesn't count (unfortunately), because I'm going to be purely recording to card and not to any external recorder device.

I was shooting a moving subject today and had to stop the aperture down on my 35-70 AI-S as the exposure changed - although I tried smoothly moving the aperture ring between the clicks, the camera seems to limit the lens' aperture to third-stop increments. I've tried switching the power aperture feature off, but it doesn't seem to make a difference - the camera still seems to want to limit the lens to the third-stops.

Any suggestions?
 
It's not a click in the lens, it's actually the camera body that causes the steps (the lens has clicks at full-stop intervals, but the camera causes clicks at 1/3-stop intervals, between the stops on the lens).
 
Ha, just tried more or less every single option in the menu, turns out it's all to do with whether or not you tell the camera what kind of non-CPU lens you have attached to it.

If you tell the camera what focal length and aperture you're using, it displays your F-stop and records the data in the Exif info of still image files, and I assume gives the camera a better idea of how to meter the scene. Unfortunately, it also induces this annoying 1/3 stop in the camera, which also happens to be pretty loud.

However, setting the camera to a blank non-CPU setting confuses the camera a bit... the aperture displays only as f0, f1, f2, and although it still roughly meters, it's not quite as accurate as having the non-CPU data set. Thankfully, it also stops the camera from really knowing where the third-stop values are when shooting video, and allows a seamless move between the click-stops on the lens' aperture ring.

So yeah, sorry for that waste of a thread. I guess I'll put this info here in case anyone else needs it, but feel free to just delete this.
 
good catch, ross! I haven't tested with a declicked lens yet, but was guessing it may be that non-CPU lens data.

Thanks for confirming.

rossfinnie said:
Ha, just tried more or less every single option in the menu, turns out it's all to do with whether or not you tell the camera what kind of non-CPU lens you have attached to it.

If you tell the camera what focal length and aperture you're using, it displays your F-stop and records the data in the Exif info of still image files, and I assume gives the camera a better idea of how to meter the scene. Unfortunately, it also induces this annoying 1/3 stop in the camera, which also happens to be pretty loud.

However, setting the camera to a blank non-CPU setting confuses the camera a bit... the aperture displays only as f0, f1, f2, and although it still roughly meters, it's not quite as accurate as having the non-CPU data set. Thankfully, it also stops the camera from really knowing where the third-stop values are when shooting video, and allows a seamless move between the click-stops on the lens' aperture ring.

So yeah, sorry for that waste of a thread. I guess I'll put this info here in case anyone else needs it, but feel free to just delete this.
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