D7200 photo and question
Since I agonized so much here over the camera decision, I thought I would post an early photo or two. These are jpgs straight out of the camera. I was packing for an overnight trip and I guess Shadow wanted to come with. Either that or she wanted to keep me from leaving…
The photos are nothing special, but I really have to say I am impressed with the ISO performance of this camera. Since it was night with adequate light for tasks but not for photography I had to bump up the ISO setting. 4000 with the D7200 is way better than I ever got with the D90 at 800. I doubt I will need this kind of performance for my outdoor photography, but it's nice to know it's there.
I have to play around with the auto focus settings a bit. Right now the camera is using several of the points and I think it is setting a best focus for the group of points. For a lot of things that will work fine, and it is fast (faster than the D90 anyway) but for photos of my cat I would like to pick one point and set it at the eye. In fact, in most cases I will want to be in control. So, off to the manual.
My real question is about the USB cable. The D90 and my Canon S100 pocket camera use the USB mini B connector. I was expecting the D7200 to have a USB micro B connector but it doesn't. The info I find online calls it a high speed USB connector. Some places I read that there is a generic cable that works and others I read that it is a custom Nikon cable. Does anyone know if there are generic cables that work? I always downloaded my D90 via cable since that's what I learned from the manual and I never bothered to change. But probably because of the 2X file sizes the D7200 seems to be slower so I will probably switch to a reader. Still, I like to keep cables in my bag and by my computer. I'll buy from Nikon if it is a custom connector but if a generic is available I would go that route. I would prefer a longer cable than what Nikon provided to reduce the possibility of stress on the connector.
Thanks.
Comments
If you are serious about using the cable for reliable transfers from the camera to a computer, a real Nikon Nikon UC-E4 USB Cable has a ferrite bead/ferrite choke to reduce high-frequency interference emanating from the camera. It's tuned for Nikon frequencies so, yeah, it costs a bit more. More problematic is that the USB Hi-Speed 2.0 connector is pretty flimsy for both the camera's USB port and for the cable side.
I highly recommend using a USB 3.0, SD card reader. With the USB 3 transfer speeds you'll get shorter transfer session times and they are reliable.
The reader I use is a: Transcend USB 3.0 SDHC / SDXC / microSDHC / SDXC Card Reader, TS-RDF5K (Black)
Works perfectly with the Sandisk SD UHS-I cards I recommended for the D7200/D7100 bodies.
It accepts Micro SD cards so you can use it as a memory stick too, for other computer-to-computer (sneakernet) applications.
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Thanks Ziggy. That's a good reason to use the Nikon cable if I go that route. I was thinking of going with a card reader for the improved speed but I thought I would keep a spare cable in my camera bag for when I am traveling. But since the card readers are about the same cost it makes sense to go that route. The laptop I will take on travel does have USB 3.0. I'm not sure my 9 year old desktop computer has USB 3.0 but the reader is backward compatible although slower on USB 2.0. Maybe I need a USB 3.0 card for the computer too.
The ones and zeros will all be the same, so it probably makes no difference at all. There might be a speed difference depending on the laptop's components. You can easily check this yourself by copying the contents of a full card to the laptop first using the reader, then using the direct slot.
Occasionally, a card reader, including card readers built into a computer, can affect reliable transfers of image files. It's important to verify any transfer prior to erasing any images on the card. (The problem usually relates to a shield failure and can happen in any card reader and at any time. Diligence is important.)
That said, I use a Transcend USB 3.0 SDHC / SDXC / microSDHC / SDXC Card Reader, TS-RDF5K (Black) with Sandisk SD cards with excellent results. (I have also used the SD card reader built into my Dell XPS tower computer. Not as fast, transfers have been consistently solid and good.)
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