Update: Nikon has issued a firmware update to address this situation. See the "D200" row on this page.

Today was "Sports Day" at Anthony's preschool, which is a fun event full of play, silliness, and dance. Like last year's Sports Day, it was very hot -- 90s in the shade, but the entire event was in the sun -- but this year I think the heat was worse for my camera than for me.

I was using my big 70-200/2.8 zoom and Nikon D200 on my monopod. After taking about 830 pictures, I was surprised to see the "battery [...]
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This post is a continuation of my earlier tripod-test posts:

Considerations for Building and Using a Tripod Tripod Stability Tests, Part I Tripod Stability Tests, Part II Tripod Stability Tests: on Shutter Speed

Part II compared different equipment setups; in this post, I'll look at the same results, but with an eye toward differing photo-taking techniques.

All images on this post were taken at f/8, ISO 100, with a 1-second shutter speed, with a pro-level 70-200 f/2.8 zoom at 200mm.

These are all from the same test session as those presented in earlier posts, so all the same caveats apply.

[...]
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(Note: this long-winded, painfully verbose post will be of interest only to serious camera geeks, if anyone)

After posting the first parts of my tripod stability tests (Part I and Part II), some discussion ensued about my choice of a one-second shutter speed for the tests, both in the comments added to the posts (comments for Part I and Part II), and in the forums at Digital Photography Review (starting from this post).

Well-presented comments from a number of different people suggested that a one-second exposure was too long, and by keeping the shutter open longer than the vibration vibrated, [...]

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Looking at my server logs lately, it's clear that people are looking forward to fall, as I can see the popularity of posts like the following bubble higher:

The Color of Kyoto — Desktop Background Kyoto Fall Foliage Desktops Photoshop's "Darken" Blend Mode (and more fall-foliage desktops)

Those three are particularly popular at the moment, mostly via people coming from the search engines' text and image search. As fall gets closer, more and more posts from my Japan, Fall Colors category will become more popular.

Fall hits Kyoto a month or more later than it seems to hit elsewhere in [...]

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I introduced my tripod stability tests in the previous post, and I'll continue in this post with more details.

Before I continue, I must note that there are some serious caveats that limit how much one can really read into the result I'm about to present. I don't list the caveats up front because no one will pay attention to them anyway /-:, so I detail them later in this post.

In this post I'll focus on equipment setup. In another, I focus more on technique.

Equipment Tests: Basics

To test the effects of changing equipment, I used a [...]

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