Rail Settings for all nikon F-mount cameras are the same!??

[hindenhaag]

Hi Bill, Nick, John and optic speciallist out there,

following me there is nothing in between the lensflange and the sensorplane. According to Nikon Europe Support the distance lens flange / sensor plane is 46.5mm for ALL NIKON F-MOUNT CAMERAS.

My conclusion, all the rail settings for different lenses should be the same for these cameras behalf the tripod mount is at the same place. So i tested my D3 settings for 14-24mm/f2.8 with my D200, and they are the same.

So let us try to get data for the distance from lens flange to tripod mount of the different nikons with F-mount. I could not get data about this from nikon.

So when the tripod mounts are in same positions, i could transfer the upper rail settings from D70S to D200 D300 D3 etc. for all the lenses mentioned in the data base

Am i right Be aware of battery grips, cause the the mounts differ in the sagittal = front to back, and i am not shure whether you can solve this problem with a T-adaptor, i do not think so.

I will go on testing,

looking forward to your response

Heinz

[nick fan]

Hi Bill, Nick, John and optic speciallist out there,

following me there is nothing in between the lensflange and the sensorplane. According to Nikon Europe Support the distance lens flange / sensor plane is 46.5mm for ALL NIKON F-MOUNT CAMERAS.

My conclusion, all the rail settings for different lenses should be the same for these cameras behalf the tripod mount is at the same place. So i tested my D3 settings for 14-24mm/f2.8 with my D200, and they are the same.

So let us try to get data for the distance from lens flange to tripod mount of the different nikons with F-mount. I could not get data about this from nikon.

So when the tripod mounts are in same positions, i could transfer the upper rail settings from D70S to D200 D300 D3 etc. for all the lenses mentioned in the data base

Am i right Be aware of battery grips, cause the the mounts differ in the sagittal = front to back, and i am not shure whether you can solve this problem with a T-adaptor, i do not think so.

I will go on testing,

looking forward to your response

Heinz

Hi Heinz,

I don't have many Nikon for analysis.
In the future we should have a database for NPP with reference to the flange.


NIck

[John Houghton]

Heinz, Attempting to provide detailed settings for every possible combination of hundreds of cameras and lenses is not really sensible. Using measurements along the lines you suggest is far more practical and was in fact the basis for the database on the Panotools wiki at http://wiki.panotools.org/Entrance_Pupil_Database. Each lens and camera needs to be measured only once - a huge practical advantage. Alas, the database is poorly populated because users have not generally been motivated to submit data to keep it up-to-date. Ideally, with the information available in such a database, it would be possible to have a gui application which would enable one to enter the camera and lens and then display the pano head settings. In reverse, one could enter the pano head settings for a new lens on an existing camera, and update the database automatically.

John

[2BeCalifornian]

Hello,

Granted, so far F-Mount Nikon cameras seem to have the same distance Sensor-Lens Flange (Thanks Heinz). However, I'd be cautious and not apply this assumption on future Nikon models. Besides, is it true for Canon cameras / others camera manufacturers?

Capturing NPPs as a function of a specific camera and a specific lens leads us invariably to a matrix that grows when lines or rows are added:
- add one camera, one needs to test NPPs with all relevant lenses,
- add one lens, one needs to test NPPs with all relevant cameras
- and what about duplicates i.e., OEM lenses, same optics, different mounts?

A lot of work, indeed.

I have been thinking about possible ways to store NPP infos. If NPPs are referenced to the lens flange then the measurement is still camera dependent! One still has to measure the distance from the tripod mount to the flange since that tripod mount is the "marker"used to position the camera on the upper rail of the Nodal Ninja.

I believe the approach used by Joseph Wisniewski with his lens table on the SwissArmyFork website is the right one: reference lenses to the film/sensor plane. That way, one is truly camera independent.

Naturally, we would need an additional table that is precisely camera specific with three entries:
- Camera type,
- distance sensor plane -> lens flange (which is included in the user manual for my D700),
- distance tripod mount -> lens flange (that's easily measured - Nikon USA told me they couldn't do it...shame on them).

From there we calculate the distance between the sensor plane and the tripod mount: this is the value is is added or subtracted from the NPP values for a specific lens.

We've just covered the case "the lens is in the table, what's the reading on the upper rail of the Nodal Ninja".

What about the case "The lens is NOT in the list"? Well, in this case someone has to:
- experiment and find the couple (NPP/focal length) then record these positions on the upper rail (i.e., tripod mount positions)
- if the camera in use is in the camera table, pull out the distance sensor plane -> lens flange and distance tripod mount -> lens flange to recompute the NPP positions not from the tripod mount but from the sensor plane.
- if the camera is not in the camera table then look out for the distance sensor-flange and measure the distance between the tripod mount and the flange!
- voila: one new entry in the lens database! (and possibly a new entry in the camera table as well)

This approach, I think, reduces the amount of re-work due to combinations and permutations. I believe that was the idea behind the wiki.panotools.org link John mentioned.

I think there's a good possibility of success at implementing these two tables on the Nodal Ninja website: folks who purchase a pano head are invariably looking for NPP values, so the incentive is there to keep the tables updated.

Cheers!

Philippe

[John Houghton]

Philipe, When the wiki database was set up, I advocated recording the entrance pupil position relative to the sensor plane. Measuring it relative to the base of the lens was preferred on the gounds that this was something yoiu could straightforwardly measure with a ruler/caliper. In fact, most if not all, interchangeable lens DSLR cameras have the sensor/film plane marked on the camera body. You can therefore directly measure the tripod mount to sensor plane distance directly, without bringing the flange distance into the computations. Measuring the entrance pupil to lens base distance accurately is not especially easy either. I suspect that if you gave a lens to several people to measure, they wouldn't all report the same values!

John