D2 battery life is AMAZING ! - over 10,000 shots

10000 Converted to US using average conversion rates.

Mike Lewis said:

I don't know about the camera Issues, but Some people like doing
this as a Hobby or just in Genral something they like to do, I
don't think it's very nice to Question the person trying to make
what he is doing a "waste of time" is how I see your trying to word
it.

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I happen to love photography and think it is a great hobby. But you might want to run the numbers, read what Bill has written and figure out how much time and money Bill is putting into his puppy shots. The guy easily has spent $10,000 in gear in the past year or two and says he has problems paying his rent and other bills. He justifies his expenses by saying it sells puppies, but he shoots so fast and so much that a good pic is pretty much a matter of luck. His web page says he now has over 134,000 pics of puppies online. Does anyone honestly think a potential buyer will look at 134,000 pics of puppies?

Bill says we “may understand that I don't have time to post process my pictures.” He says we “may also understand how exhausted I often am…. I spend hours sorting through photos. And I won't even mention how sore my arm has been for a year. Tennis Elbow big time.” And Bill tells us that “last Saturday I took 6,500 and kept about 850. The Saturday before I took about 6,900 and kept around a 900” So in two Saturdays, he took 13,400 shots and kept about 1,750 of them. If when using Nikon’s top focusing and metering cameras one has a keeper rate of under 15%, then he is wasting time. His D70 broke 4 months ago, but he has not gotten around to sending it in for repair. His D2X broke nearly a month ago and he has not sent it in. If we take Bill literally, all he does is go to the park with his dogs and take photos, yet he can't find the time to send in his broken cameras for repair. Rather than getting his D70 or D2X fixed, Bill says “I spent ALL my money (that I should have spent on rent and other urgent bills) on a D2hs.” And I don’t believe this is first time Bill has mentioned his financial difficulties.

I think it is almost always short sighted to put a hobby ahead of paying rent. If Bill is happy, more power to him. I’m glad I’m not his landlord. He is harming his credit rating and breaching a legal obligation every time he fails to pay his bills when they are due. So Mike, you and I will just have to respectfully disagree.

Bill, I certainly agree with your statement that most of us don’t understand the passions of others. I don’t doubt that the pups are your passion. Best of luck to you.

Gene
North Carolina

please don't take my question too seriously or offensive. but if you mainly shoot your puppies jumping around, video could be nice too. that's kind of closer to life.

But it is a task only for an obsessive soul. But I never heard of an obsessive battery which can do ten times its specified performance especially at bellow zero temperatures. Maybe it is a defective copy...
--
Andre

--
Andre

The suggestion has already been made and I agree that video clips would seem much more appropriate. I think he should consider repairing and selling the D2X and replacing it with a Sony HDR-HC1.

farbrausch said:

please don't take my question too seriously or offensive. but if
you mainly shoot your puppies jumping around, video could be nice
too. that's kind of closer to life.

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Since the expected life of the D2X shutter is 150K and yours died at 82K they should pay you for the difference.
--
Andre

It is too far beyond its specificatiion. I would consider a 2500 shots at 20C as a wonderful performance but more than 10.000 at -C. It's a world record.
--
Andre

Really interesting gallery. Poms have been a pet hate of mine since a spinster aunt of mine had one for 15 years in my youth. It would nip at me at every opportunity but in its latter years it would gum me viciously whilst yapping incessantly.

No, gripes with dogs as we looked after 15 cocker/springers for one short period when there was a problem with contraception of our main pair and we've looked after at least one dog for all my childhood. Absolutely love dogs as pets.

Some of my favourite pictures are of these "familiy members".

However, your Poms look fantastic and judging from your gallery, they bring genuine joy (and so great smiles) to so many people.

Love the people portraits you do with them.

I love the picture of the "day old" dog. I remember hand feeding the runts and making sure that all 13 puppies got fed......oooh drifting OT

On the photographic front, thanks for testing shutters for us, we'll know what to expect in the future from Nikon DSLRs. Will spend more time looking in your galleries for sure.

I've never had a Dlsr but if he did take 10,000 shots a day wouldn't that make for a camera lasting only about 10 days shooting? I read on here that the new Canon 5D's shutter is rated for "ONLY" 100,000 shots.
--
Canon G5
http://www.pbase.com/davedent

PerfectPoms wrote:
I've got over 135,000 photos on

PerfectPoms said:

pbase right now.

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Good God, you figure someone who invests in a D2X and D2Hs would know how to take pictures and wouldn't need to take so many shots........

Jrobe said:

I have read quite a few of these posts here of people taking an
incredible number of pictures like this. I am not really
commenting on the original poster because I don't know your
situation. I just wonder if there isn't some kind of an obsessive
compulsive disorder that involes hitting the shutter button of a
camera thousands and thousands of times (in search of who knows
what). Maybe this is a new psychiatric illness that digital
cameras have created. Makes you wonder anyway.

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If you look at the galleries, all the shots are all taken in succession and aren't much different from each other. Just lay on the button and upload them all. What a waste of a good camera.

PerfectPoms said:

I don't know about useless. I get more good photos this way. I
think if I was shooting candids at a wedding I would shoot 8 fps at
times to get a better selection of shots to pick out those shots
which have the BEST expression.

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OR you could actuallly learn how to take good photos and you wouldn't have to shoot so much........just a thought.

Shooting JPEG Large Normal on the D2hs with 4 meg photos I filled 3 x 2 gig cards, 4 x 1 gig cards, and part of a slower 2 gig card. I still had in reserve 5 x 512 mb cards, an old 1 gig microdrive and a 256 mb card.

--
Bill,

http://www.pbase.com/billmcintyre

Andre Oliveira said:

It is too far beyond its specificatiion. I would consider a 2500
shots at 20C as a wonderful performance but more than 10.000 at -C.
It's a world record.
--
Andre

Click to expand...

But the way I shoot is a little different than many people. Although I DO have image review on on the LCD, I am taking all these shots in a few hours, so the camera doesn't spend too much time idle. And, surprisingly, shooting at 8 fps doesn't seem to strain the battery too much.

I even wonder if the temperature outside may have helped the situation, because the camera insides and circuit boards, etc., would have warmed up with use.

I think if other users who shoot lots of sports were to note their battery level remaining after taking lots of shots we would have some similar results, or at least approaching close to this.

--
Bill,

http://www.pbase.com/billmcintyre

It took me about 10 shots to get this one with a D70 and a 80-200 f2.8......and not that it's exceptional. But, I can't understand why you feel the need to take 10,000 shots in one day of dogs?



--
http://www.ianz28.smugmug.com

VictorDB said:

Really interesting gallery. Poms have been a pet hate of mine
since a spinster aunt of mine had one for 15 years in my youth. It
would nip at me at every opportunity but in its latter years it
would gum me viciously whilst yapping incessantly.

Click to expand...

Yes, they are a breed that some people do NOT like. They are one of those breeds that in some cases can bond to one person and yap at everyone else and defend their owner. They do have a tendency to lose their teeth as they get older. They do bark more than many dogs. They also live a long time. Sometimes to over 20 years.

VictorDB said:

No, gripes with dogs as we looked after 15 cocker/springers for one
short period when there was a problem with contraception of our
main pair and we've looked after at least one dog for all my
childhood. Absolutely love dogs as pets.

Some of my favourite pictures are of these "familiy members".

Click to expand...

A friend of mine calls my dogs "people of fur."

VictorDB said:

However, your Poms look fantastic and judging from your gallery,
they bring genuine joy (and so great smiles) to so many people.

Click to expand...

Yes, wherever I go (most) people are all smiles and very happy to see me - or maybe they are happy to see the dogs and puppies - maybe that's it. I think you can imagine how me walking down busy downtown Toronto sidewalks with 6 tiny dogs faithfully following at my heels with no leashes brings smiles to people's faces. I sometimes have 15 or even more dogs and puppies with me in the park, and I actually have to avoid certain places because I will get MOBBED by kids and rude people are "all over" my little guys.

But I certainly see a lot of smiles. It is nice to bring such joy to people. And as much as some people here may not appreciate my photos, many people who like this type of little dog tell me they follow my pbase gallery updates religiously. I've had 2 1/4 million hits on my pbase photos.

VictorDB said:

Love the people portraits you do with them.

I love the picture of the "day old" dog. I remember hand feeding
the runts and making sure that all 13 puppies got fed......oooh
drifting OT

On the photographic front, thanks for testing shutters for us,
we'll know what to expect in the future from Nikon DSLRs. Will
spend more time looking in your galleries for sure.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

--
Bill,

http://www.pbase.com/billmcintyre

Dave said:

I've never had a Dlsr but if he did take 10,000 shots a day
wouldn't that make for a camera lasting only about 10 days
shooting? I read on here that the new Canon 5D's shutter is rated
for "ONLY" 100,000 shots.
--
Canon G5
http://www.pbase.com/davedent

Click to expand...

All those shots that day wasn't a typical day for me, so the camera would last longer than that - although an average (long) day for me with my D70 was 3,000 photos.

But in my experience, I think you should get, on average, maybe twice the rated shutter clicks before the camera dies.

--
Bill,

http://www.pbase.com/billmcintyre

ntntntnt

Bill,

You enjoy your people of fur and I think that every kid should have experience of looking after a life and all the rewards and sorrows that you have to go through to with them (births, vaccinations, tail docking (in the 1970's) and the inevitable deaths).

To tell the truth, I was sad when my Aunt's Pomeranian, Sandy, died aged 16. It was her constant companion and try as we like she would not replace her with a puppy. They are now both deceased.

Your pictures may not be award winning in the Ansel Adams sense but they do have a humanity (if you pardon that specie-ist comment) that I among many enjoy.

We've just come back from a Chrisdingle service (very CoE) here in the UK at which my son (7) was Joseph. Had his Coolpix 2100 and at the beginning and in the end had only 2 useable shots of say 30 taken (the Church was dark and recycling time was painful...). I left the F5 behind.

Needless to say Grandma will have a copy of the best photo in her Christmas card so I do enjoy the convenience of Digital but am suffering the slowness of affordable compact Digital cameras.

We plan to go to China in the Summer and I had planned to go down the DSLR route but now in December with say 6 months realistically to save and one month to familarise myself with technique, its beginning to look an unrealistic dream (don't believe in Credit purchases). So we may go with a the Coolpix and the F5 (or FE2 for weight purposes).

I guess we can live vicariously with your fantastic exlpoits with DSLRs and your Perfect Poms. Incidentally, your 10,000 pictures would have cost me £1,666 Sterling in Kodachrome (notwithstanding postage to Switzerland) and I'd probably see the results in January.

Go figure, even on my Consultancy rates I'd have to be working for a goldplated client for that.

Victor