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How a ring type ultrasonic motor with manual override works. Nikkor 60mm 2.8G macro during repair
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[OC] The Z8’s bird AF paired with the 600mm f/6.3 is practically a cheat code for Fairy-wrens. (But the culling process almost broke me).
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Making the Nikon F5 a modern EXIF powerhouse for cheap
I made a cable for my Nikon F5 that works on Windows11 at minimal expense. There isn't one comprehensive spot for all of this information, so I thought it was worth a new post. All of this assumes an MF-28 data back, the metadata is pretty sparse otherwise. This should all be similar for F100/N90, but I don't know for example if those need VCC lines connected.
Previously, the best resource I found was this old reddit thread. They did all the legwork that I'm compiling/tweaking, so all props to them.
There are problems here, though. The posts are inconsistent between original and comments, and the diagrams are confusing. I think this can be simplified.
First, get your hands on an MC-30 shutter release with the 10-pin connector. I found one for $25. Then, get an FT232 off Amazon, a USB rs232 controller. I don't think any particular one is better or worse. Make sure it supports 5v. Price range is about $10.
Cut the cable, there's 10 wires inside. Everything I've read shows that these are simply color coded, so we only need four for the F5. Red, blue, yellow, green.
To me this is where it gets confusing, the black and white diagram is actually the CABLE side I believe, pinout looking at the table. The color annotated diagram is the CAMERA side, looking at the camera, so they are mirrored, but the real solution is to ignore these diagrams because the color coding on an MC30 should be consistent. By all means you can use a multimeter to double check these.
Diagrams from the previous post show Green/yellow bonded to ground. This seems right. Previous posts show Brown to VCC. I don't think this is necessary, this sends a voltage from the camera to the controller. I left this off.
I believe this is CABLE side view
I believe this is CAMERA side view
Next we have RED and BLUE. Most diagrams mark Red as RX and Blue as TX. There is an important nuance I struggled with for a long time, which is that Red is the camera receiving FROM the RS232, and Blue is the camera transmitting TO the RS232. So depending on the convention of the RS232, you may well need to connect the Blue TX wire to the RX wire of the rs232! This is opposite of what is in the picture attached from the old thread! I don't know if this is universally true of all rs232 controllers, but for mine I needed to send Red to rs232-TX and Blue to rs232-RX.
A great diagram from the previous thread, but I had to swap RX\/TX, and found +5V unnecessary
Plug in the USB cable, attach to camera, turn on camera.
Now for the software. SoftTalk2000 still works fine, I had to set Win95 compatibility mode in Win11. I saw very little information on data recording modes, so I attached a snippet from the Nikon Photo Secretary manual. You need to update the recording mode, save it, and change film rolls before the changes are effective and full metadata records.
https://preview.redd.it/kigwfqxy5wkg1.png?width=922&format=png&auto=webp&s=d1c6a9577c41bc54f24bc99f63ac05e815a04a28
This yields downloadable metadata in some detail, like this:
comment=Photographer Free User
separator=
filmno=1
frames=2
camera=1
ISO= 200
data=
1 1/2500 f/4 Normal Colour Matrix M Mode 85mm+0.0 f/1.8-16.02/20/20269:33:44 PM2026 FEB/20 21:33 44
2 1/2000 f/4 Normal Colour Matrix M Mode 85mm+0.0 f/1.8-15.72/20/20269:33:48 PM2026 FEB/20 21:33 47
Do note with this detail, the camera will only hold 10 rolls of data, so clear rolls often through SoftTalk.
We're almost there-
I made a cable for my Nikon F5 that works on Windows11 at minimal expense. There isn't one comprehensive spot for all of this information, so I thought it was worth a new post. All of this assumes an MF-28 data back, the metadata is pretty sparse otherwise. This should all be similar for F100/N90, but I don't know for example if those need VCC lines connected.
Previously, the best resource I found was this old reddit thread. They did all the legwork that I'm compiling/tweaking, so all props to them.
There are problems here, though. The posts are inconsistent between original and comments, and the diagrams are confusing. I think this can be simplified.
First, get your hands on an MC-30 shutter release with the 10-pin connector. I found one for $25. Then, get an FT232 off Amazon, a USB rs232 controller. I don't think any particular one is better or worse. Make sure it supports 5v. Price range is about $10.
Cut the cable, there's 10 wires inside. Everything I've read shows that these are simply color coded, so we only need four for the F5. Red, blue, yellow, green.
To me this is where it gets confusing, the black and white diagram is actually the CABLE side I believe, pinout looking at the table. The color annotated diagram is the CAMERA side, looking at the camera, so they are mirrored, but the real solution is to ignore these diagrams because the color coding on an MC30 should be consistent. By all means you can use a multimeter to double check these.
Diagrams from the previous post show Green/yellow bonded to ground. This seems right. Previous posts show Brown to VCC. I don't think this is necessary, this sends a voltage from the camera to the controller. I left this off.
I believe this is CABLE side view
I believe this is CAMERA side view
Next we have RED and BLUE. Most diagrams mark Red as RX and Blue as TX. There is an important nuance I struggled with for a long time, which is that Red is the camera receiving FROM the RS232, and Blue is the camera transmitting TO the RS232. So depending on the convention of the RS232, you may well need to connect the Blue TX wire to the RX wire of the rs232! This is opposite of what is in the picture attached from the old thread! I don't know if this is universally true of all rs232 controllers, but for mine I needed to send Red to rs232-TX and Blue to rs232-RX.
A great diagram from the previous thread, but I had to swap RX\/TX, and found +5V unnecessary
Plug in the USB cable, attach to camera, turn on camera.
Now for the software. SoftTalk2000 still works fine, I had to set Win95 compatibility mode in Win11. I saw very little information on data recording modes, so I attached a snippet from the Nikon Photo Secretary manual. You need to update the recording mode, save it, and change film rolls before the changes are effective and full metadata records.
https://preview.redd.it/kigwfqxy5wkg1.png?width=922&format=png&auto=webp&s=d1c6a9577c41bc54f24bc99f63ac05e815a04a28
This yields downloadable metadata in some detail, like this:
comment=Photographer Free User
separator=
filmno=1
frames=2
camera=1
ISO= 200
data=
1 1/2500 f/4 Normal Colour Matrix M Mode 85mm+0.0 f/1.8-16.02/20/20269:33:44 PM2026 FEB/20 21:33 44
2 1/2000 f/4 Normal Colour Matrix M Mode 85mm+0.0 f/1.8-15.72/20/20269:33:48 PM2026 FEB/20 21:33 47
Do note with this detail, the camera will only hold 10 rolls of data, so clear rolls often through SoftTalk.
We're almost there-
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