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Nikon D200 Clock Accuracy
© 2006 KenRockwell.com

I bought mine from Ritz here. I bought another D200 from Adorama here. Also try Amazon here. Adorama usually has D200/18-70 kits in stock here. It helps me keep adding to this site when you click these links to get yours.

Clock Accuracy

Every sample will vary. Mine is very good: from December 24th, 2005 through April 2nd, 2006 (a little over three months) it gained only 8 seconds. This is only about 2.5 seconds per month fast. This is the best clock accuracy of any camera I've owned.

I've always been a nut about clock accuracy. Even as a kid in 30 years ago (before quartz) I logged the accuracy of all my mechanical watches against WWV via shortwave radio.

I appreciate my D200 because I don't need to set it any more often than we change from daylight to standard time. It ticks me off when other cameras can get more than a minute off every couple of months.

I predict in six months my D200 will be 14 seconds faster than I set it, so I set it 7 seconds slow. This gives me an average absolute value error of less than 2 seconds over the entire six months.

Yours will vary, so check it yourself. I listen to WWV via shortwave radio, today you can get the same time info here, or hear it by phone at (303) 499-7111 in Colorado and (808) 335-4363 in Hawaii.

More good news about the D200: one may adjust time zones or Daylight Savings without resetting the clock. Other cameras like my D70 require resetting the clock from scratch, which loses my split-second calibration unless I'm home with access to a time standard like WWV. On my D200 I select DST ON or OFF or select a time zone and my D200 doesn't miss a beat.

I don't use Nikon's software. If you use Nikon's transfer tool you can set it to sync your camera's clock to your computer's clock. Windows computers' clocks aren't any more accurate than cameras, while Apple computers default to sync automatically to atomic references.

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