D7 - Magnification in low light

I noticed yesterday when trying too shoot some low-light / night shots that the magnification button did not work. Now, that made it almost impossible for me to use MF and I had to shoot the series with AF = rather mediocre results.

Is this a bug, a feature or a problem with my D7?

cheers,
--Thordur Arnason
http://www.arnason.no/

Maybe Minolta thought it wouldn't be possible to focus by hand without light...

Workaround: I hold a small lighter between camera and scene, wait till the EVF switches to 'color' and press the button.
It stays in magnified mode after removing the lighter!
tc

Thordur Arnason said:

I noticed yesterday when trying too shoot some low-light / night
shots that the magnification button did not work. Now, that made it
almost impossible for me to use MF and I had to shoot the series
with AF = rather mediocre results.

Is this a bug, a feature or a problem with my D7?

cheers,

--
Thordur Arnason
http://www.arnason.no/

Click to expand...

Thordur Arnason said:

I noticed yesterday when trying too shoot some low-light / night
shots that the magnification button did not work. Now, that made it
almost impossible for me to use MF and I had to shoot the series
with AF = rather mediocre results.

Is this a bug, a feature or a problem with my D7?

Click to expand...

It's a "limitation" :-(. But there is a workaround...

http://www.luiswatkins.com/homepages/dimage7/
(in the "How-to Tips" section)

Basically, if your EVF is in b/w mode due to low light, you shine a light into the lens (or aim the camera towards a light in the room). At that time, the display will switch back to color. You can then enable the 4x mode and go back to framing/focusing your shot. Even when you go back to a low light situation, the camera will not switch out of 4x mode once it has been enabled.

--Mike--Dimage7Powerbook G4Canon S800

I thought that this issue had been taken care off by the firmware upgrade? Upgrade the firmware and you will see that the bug is gone.

--Pablettowww.pbase.com/pettas(samples taken with the MINOLTA DiMAGE 7)Last update 14 December 2001

There was something fixed having to do with the low light mode, but this isn't it. The lack of magnification in low light mode is documented in the manual and isn't a bug, but it might be nice if it was changed. Why this is this way we can only guess. My top two guesses 1) it looks really grainy when the B&W mode is magnified since the gain is so high. 2) they wrote mag routines for color, but not B&W and would have to duplicate everything.

What WAS fixed was that if you were in B&W mode, then switched to Play mode while still in B&W mode, you could not magnify the picture in play mode.... oops.

Bryan

Pabletto said:

I thought that this issue had been taken care off by the firmware
upgrade? Upgrade the firmware and you will see that the bug is gone.

--
Pabletto

http://www.pbase.com/pettas
(samples taken with the MINOLTA DiMAGE 7)
Last update 14 December 2001

Click to expand...

Hi all,

I'm pretty sure I have the new firmware (A1v121u,A180 is the newest, right?), and my camera behaves as Thordur describes. A bit of a nuisance.

George

Pabletto said:

I thought that this issue had been taken care off by the firmware
upgrade? Upgrade the firmware and you will see that the bug is gone.

--
Pabletto

http://www.pbase.com/pettas
(samples taken with the MINOLTA DiMAGE 7)
Last update 14 December 2001

Click to expand...

Bryan Biggers said:

What WAS fixed was that if you were in B&W mode, then switched to
Play mode while still in B&W mode, you could not magnify the
picture in play mode.... oops.

Click to expand...

Oops! Yes Bryan, you are right. I seem to have misread the initial posting. I stand corrected.

Bryan Biggers said:

Why this is this way we can only guess. My top two
guesses 1) it looks really grainy when the B&W mode is magnified
since the gain is so high. 2) they wrote mag routines for color,
but not B&W and would have to duplicate everything.

Click to expand...

I think it must be the first one. The EVF is very grainy indeed in low light situation even when in colour mode, thus making manual zoom hard even if you use the 4x magnification. So, I guess MINOLTA did not want to implement somehting that they knew would be useless.

Think about it. All this fuss about how the EVF/LCD turns to B&W to make viewing possible from MINOLTA and then we would have a Dr. Gonzo telling us what a useless future it is! I think MINOLTA sure knew what they were doing and just wanted to save us some more trolling.....

--Pablettowww.pbase.com/pettas(samples taken with the MINOLTA DiMAGE 7)Last update 14 December 2001