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gerry b.

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  1. <p>If you want to experiment with older flash units on newer cameras a Wein Safe-Sync is a good investment. It also gives you a PC socket if your camera has a hot shoe but lacks a socket (like a Rollei 35).</p>
  2. <p>I had the same problem with a 55mm 3.5 AI lens, and two independent estimates for cleaning and relubricating the lens were in the vicinity of $120-160. The second estimate was from a local firm that usually has quite low prices for work, I questioned them about the cost, and they said that the complexity of the lens with its CRC made it a particularly labor-intensive CLA, which follows the above comments. So, I bought an AI'd earlier version of the lens for about half the cost of the needed CLA. These are among the best bargains in Nikon lenses, but the lubrication issue is a problem.</p>
  3. <p>If you own a tripod that does not have a reversible head with a 1/4" screw, you can also get adapters at B&H and Adorama that allow use of the Leitz head and also add about 3/8" to the height of the ballhead+tripod. I use one on a travel tripod with the Leitz head.</p>
  4. <p>Obviously a nice camera. But what I am really impressed by is the quality your lightbox digitization of slides!</p>
  5. <p>True creativity and a willingness to stifle it so you can shoot all the cliches that the market requires until "your vision" catches on (if it ever does).</p>
  6. <p>Hmm, on my monitor the blown highlights are grey, not white and they are not particularly light in tone. And there are a lot of colors that are not washed out, they are actually pretty intense, especially the greens. I've shot thousands of Provia slides, with bracketing and sometimes with some significant overexposure, and I've never seen a look quite like this before.</p>
  7. <p>Or they were scanned with wrong media settings.</p>
  8. <p>Is it just me, or do these positives look like they were processed improperly? I To me these do not look like overexposed slides at all, they look like someone souped them in the wrong developer.</p>
  9. <p>I agree that it is atmospheric and realistic. And I like the Banksy shot, too.</p>
  10. <p>Since you are getting some detailed advice about traveling and shooting in the Highlands, I will add some specific advice about Shetland, where I have spent much time. First, it is a wonderful place to visit, with fantastic places for photography and very friendly and hospitable people. However, I would not go there for photography with hitch-hiking as my primary means of getting around. It is not uncommon to experience rain storms with wind gusts of 40+ miles per hour there in midsummer, and it is normal and frequent from September into May. I have traveled by hitchhiking there, and walking into winds like that with a heavy pack gets old real fast. There are buses, but then you lose flexibility in your photography if you are going from bus stop to bus stop. And they are not frequent in the most rural areas where there are some of the most spectacular photography opportunities.<br /> <br />It costs about US $45-50 a day to rent a car there, and if you get a diesel, which you should, you can go a long way on a tank of fuel because the distances are not great by North American standards when going around the archipelago. Believe me, this is the way to travel around Shetland. If you are intimidated about driving a stick shift on the left side of the road, Shetland is a good place to learn because there is not heavy traffic outside of the main town Lerwick. You can stay in simple hostels that are called camping bods and save money in housing, but you will want a car. One thing that is great about Shetland versus the west coast of Scotland, and it is partly a by-product of the wind, is that there are very few midgies there. The west coast of Scotland and its islands are breathtakingly beautiful, but those insects can be a distraction, and can affect your shooting as well.</p>
  11. <p>If you follow your plan to hitch-hike through the Scottish islands, I would not take an RB. It is not just the weight, it is how it handles. The camera pretty much has to be carried in a back-pack because of its weight and size, and that means every time you want to take a shot with it you will have to remove the pack, unload the camera, and most of the time, mount it on a tripod, etc. Then go through all of the composition, shutter cocking, film advancing, focusing steps and with some frequency changing backs or films. Yes, that will be a contemplative way to shoot, but it rains very often in the Hebrides, the West Highlands and in Shetland, and often on short time cycles. In some places cars do not go by very often, so you may well be committed to longer than desirable walks. All of these environmental factors make field photography in general more challenging there than in other environments, and there is an advantage to be able to pull out a camera and put it away fairly quickly.<br> <br />I think the advice about taking a TLR like a Rolleiflex, a Rolleicord, or a Minolta Autocord is worth a close look, because they are all quite light and small compared with an RB. For purposes of taking landscapes, where parallax shifts in close-ups do not matter, you can put a mask on the focusing screen to mark 645 size. A long time ago when I was making 4X4 superslides with a Rolleicord, I had the amazingly dim original ground glass screen replaced by Bill Maxwell and he scribed 4X4 cropping lines on the new screen, and it worked great. I suspect the Hasselblad option would also work well, but you will be into more money for that compared with a basic TLR.</p>
  12. <p>Yes, I bought my 300mm 4 AF non-S used without a lens cap, and I bought a Tamron cap, I believe new but I cannot remember where. I agree with RJ - it is very well-made and works great on the lens.</p>
  13. <p>It wasn't clear to me from your original post whether you liked the original transparencies in terms of their color balance? If so, then yes, you need to find a better processing and scanning service. If you decide to go with learning how to scan yourself with a scanner like the Epson flatbeds, then I think you will find that scanning transparencies for producing files for printing is easier to get into than scanning negative film. There are tricks in the scanning process that eventually make negative scanning no big deal, but it takes some experimentation to learn them. In general, there is a whole set of principles that need to be learned to become adept at scanning, which is one reason to find a lab that you like, and have them do it. Since you are using such high quality equipment to create the image, it would be a waste to lose that quality in processing and "post-processing". Just some thoughts, your mileage may vary.</p>
  14. <p>I also understand the attraction of film, and also carry a Barnack Leica much of the time when I travel, but the poster's proposed kit just sounds incredibly heavy.</p>
  15. <p>I have owned a 300mm 4.5 EDIF, and I currently own both the non AFS 300mm 4.0, the 70-300mm VR zoom, a TC-14B and a D7000. The old lens has considerably lower image quality compared with the modern lenses. I think the zoom is very good, and although I'm a fan of non-plastic component construction, I have given that lens some hard use and it seems to stay in specifications well.<br> <br />The non-AFS 300mm is so heavy it is simply natural to pick up the lens-camera combination by the lens: I doubt you would pick it up by the camera by mistake. I echo what you said about the non-afs with the TC14-b teleconverter: it works quite well, and the tc makes it a 630mm lens on a D7000, albeit with a loss in the maximum aperture. However, at that length, the tripod, head and technique may be more important than the optics for sharp images.</p>
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