john_riedel

I've used almost the same setup, but have the Quantum Battery 1+, the adapater replaces the AA. Always worked well, can shot all day, and the recycle time is shorter.

Normally the wife and I use a pair of F100, but just a few weeks ago we did a three day event with a D100 and a D70. I saw a bunch of other people with D70s. I had a bunch of times when people said, oh, that's a digital. Of course I had it on a Stroboframe, with a SB800, 80-200 lens, and a Quantum battery pack. The camera body was just about the smallest part of the rig.

 

We and a few other "pros" where the only ones crawling around between the first row and the stage. I was also the only one that brought monolights and a backdrop to take formals of the VIPs.

 

Like others have said the pictures speak for themselves, I'm not worried.

Most of these places have low, low lighting. I play in a band, and the wife tried to get some shots of us. We put Tmax3200 in the camera, and pushed it to 6400, with a f2.8 105 lens she was OK most of the time.

 

I've not tried the D70 in that type of lighting yet, but if we had a hard time with film at 6400, then any digital camera that tops out at something like 1600 is going not going to work very well.

 

Next time bring a tripod, with some long shutter times you might get some neat pictures from the motion blur of the players moving.<div></div>

Did you check the lock on the shutter button, the one that holds it open? It's the little lever around the button.

 

I had it happen to me last year while taking an important picture. It got bumped to that setting while being bounced around in a plane, and I didn't notice. The sad part was I was the one that made the plane bounce around trying to get a landing gear down light to go on...... long story, but a happy ending.

Yes you are right Ron, printers COULD take a C41 neg, but they hated it. First off they have to make a postive of some kind, an extra step. And then they are on the hook for the final color balance and have nothing to start with as a reference. With a postive the final four color offset page can be comapred side by side with the submitted artwork. With the color sep machines on the market, the printer can now take a C41 neg and see the final results on the screen before any plates are burned. Still leaves him on the hook for color, but now a lot of guess work is gone.

 

Of course if you ship a printer a Quark/Pagemaker/etc file with your pictures already included, all he has to do is have the software make the CYMK seps.

On the editors wanting E6.

 

A lot of this came from the print shop. My father worked as printer for 40 plus years. Long ago, the printer had to make a color seperation. He had to shoot four negs from the postive artwork using a screen onto Kodalith. In fact I did this once or twice as kid when I visited the print shop. Most shops sent out the artwork to get the color seperations done mainly to a shop that speicalized in it. Printers also found out that making the color seps. with E6 was faster and easyer. They didn't have to fight with reflections and limited Dmax from a print. As much as 20 years ago the shops doing color seps started get digital equipment, very expensive at the time, but it cut down the work required and color started getting cheaper to print. The newer equipment also made the corrections needed for non-E6 faster.

Thus, most printers today can get same quality out of a print or E6.

 

(All this from a converation last year with my dad, still works as a printer part-time.)

Big hand in the air, please continue with the classes.

The information about Stockholm having more public cameras is funny. Just go to any green area downtown on a nice sunny day around lunch time. You will see more skin than at most US beaches.

 

No one cares, little kids are playing with no clothes on in the fountains. I also recall that a law is still on the books that allows someone to take their weekly bath in any public fountain.

 

The people and the police just have better things to worry about than someone snapping pictures out on the street.

I've used the 2.8/35-70 for some time. Flare has never been a problem. The lens has always done the job. I had a Sigma 28-80 3.5-5.6 and that thing had tons of flare, just stand next to a white wall and use flash, watch it flare from the flash bouncing off the wall.

OK, my list

 

2 - F100 We use them about 80% of the time.

FG ( our first Nikon )

N50 ( on loan to a friend )

FE ( someone loaned it to us, but I can't seem to find it )

17-35 f2.8 AFS

35-70 f2.8D

50 f1.4D

micro 105 f2.8

80-200 f2.8ED (last non-AFS two ring version)

 

SB28 with a quantum pack

SB80DX " " " "

 

Now, does the 50mm f2.8 enlarger lens count?

 

Let's not get into the non-Nikon/non-35mm cameras and lens

Somewhere in this post utility companies and capacitors were talked about.

 

From a an old EE that used to work for a power company...

 

The reason for the capacitor in AC utility power is different than using a capacitor in DC applications.

 

In the real AC world not all loads are purely resistive, in fact most like motors, balasts for lamps and such make the load on the system reactive, in this case mainly inductive. This results in a difference in KWatts, and KVoltAmps. KW, KVA, KVAR, and power factor (pf) are all related numbers. If you know any two you can compute the others. The goal is to get the power factor as close to 1.0, a pure resistive load has a pf of 1.0. The way to counter an inductive load is to balance it with either a capacitor bank, or by using more syncro AC motors in the system. A power company bills by one, but you get the use of the other, so the closer you can the pf of your equipment closer to 1.0, the lower your power bill. One the other hand, I've seen an over corrected system on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the design pushed the load to be too capacitive when usage was low. They kept tripping generators by having the power factor too low. It's not a goog idea to leave 200 people in the dark 30 miles out at sea.

 

The other thing is that in AC power you can not longer think of a bunch of wires. The long lines become comparable to the wavelength of 60Hz, so now you have to also worry about the problems you have with RF and transmittion line effects.

 

Bottom line, just because the power company uses big capactior banks on transmition lines (AC), doesn't mean that in battery (DC) systems it's going to do the same thing.

A PDF reader is supplied for every platform I've ever used, not just PC and Mac, or Linux, but AIX, SUN, HPUX, VMS, etc...

OK two.... One mine, one I saw the results.

 

Got a roll of C-41 processed, it was a sent out, tried the PhotoCD option just to see what I'd get. Turn out OK, so next time I drop off a roll, I really needed the PhotoCD. The CD was blank, at first they said it must be each of the five different machines I tried to read it with. Then they told me they would remake the CD. Then after a few days of it not being done, they complained that they needed the original envelope from the first try. When all said it done, it took three weeks to get the PhotoCD, and they returned the negs just tossed in with the CD, no sleeves.

 

 

Second one.... I lady I know took CN type film of her sister's wedding, the lab ran in real black and white, that mask made it very hard for her to print them.

It's about time they did something to replace RG100 and Supra 100. Now if they can just bring back something like RG 25.

Something else that hasn't been talked about. It used to be that best way for a printer to make the color seperations needed was to start with a slide rather than print. If you gave them a negative then then had to copy it to a slide first. This started to change in the mid to late 80s when the slides were being scanned to make the seperations. As the hardware got cheaper, and scanning negatives was just as easy, the preference of slides over negatives went away.

 

This is from my father that has been a printer for the past 40 years.

Not very hard to do, if you can take care of B&W film, then the reversal process is not hard, just a bunch more steps. The only real thing that controls the results is the time in the first dev.

 

I've used the Kodak kit a few times and had good results, no one could figure out how I got Scala processed in one day. :)

 

The Kodak kit has all the required stuff in seven bottles. All you needs is stop and fixer.

 

Just checked the bottles in the kit......

 

Dev I has part A, Potassium sulfite, Potassium carbonate, Sodium hydroxide and Hydroquine, Metol.

 

Dev I Part B polymeric glycol

 

Clearing bath has Potassium sulfite, Potassium carbonate and Sodium bicarbonate

 

Dev II Part A same as Dev I Part A

 

Dev II Part B Same as Dev II part B but with Potassium sulfite and Dimethylamine borane

 

Bleach Part A Potassium permanganate, Part B Sulfuric Acid

 

The Dev I and Dev II are mostly the same, Dev II has Dimethylamine borane which is a chemical fogging agent, so you could get away with out by exposing the film to a bright light just like the old E4 process. Using this formula you get away from thiocynate and the chromates, the only nasty thing over standard B&W is the Sulfuric acid.

 

Check out this page, it has a lot of formulas and information

 

http://users.frii.com/jkbl/reversal/

As to not putting a TC on a zoom, see these two pictures to see what a 2X does on a 80-200 f/2.8

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2065782

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2065784

 

Not the sharpest images ever, but I've seen worse out of prime lenses with no TC.

From what I understand the machines used for carry-on do not turn up the power. About the only thing the operator can do is put your bag back into the machine, just turned differently in hopes of getting a better view. The machines used for check bags DO turn up the power if something blocks the xray image.

 

That being said, I have use an Xray bag, it was less than a year after 9/11 and no one knew for sure what type of insecption you would get from one day to the next. I was also going out of the U.S, didn't know what to expect in other countries. My feelings were that it couldn't hurt to use the bag.

 

I got two Xrays out and four on the way back. The only time anyone cared was on the way back in Paris, the man running the Xray wanted me to open a carry-on, I did, and then handed him the Xray big right away, he just smiled and waved me on, didn't even care to look inside it.

 

Even back in the U.S. I had to put shoes in the machine, I was also the one of every four that got the extra hand held metal detector scan, but nothing said of the Xray bag.

Car, try an airplane. The paper work to track each part back to the batch of metal it was made from costs more than part and labor to manufacture it. And then you have the labor to put the part on the plane and all the paper work and log books that the shop has to fill out.

Just did some Tmax 3200 pushed to 6400 last night. No tint problems using Kodak rapid fixer with hardener. I did notice that the developer had a blue color to it when I dumped it out of the tank, and the stop bath came out with a pink color. It didn't look like the fixer picked up and of the dyes, or if it did, it was very slight.

I second Calumet. I picked up the two lights, two stands, two umbrella and case kit for under $1K last year around this time, been very happy with it. I understand the lights are made by Bowens for Calument.

Good point on the mining of Gold/Silver/Copper. I know of a company that over ten years ago sold a gold mine. The resaon, they just started a very large cooper mine, and the amount of gold/silver they recovered from the copper mine was way more than the gold mine.

I do something like this every year. I'm further from the stage so I end up using a 80-200 ED2.8 on an F100, SB-28 hooked to a Quantum battery pack and ISO 100 film. The camera is set on P, and I use a Stroboframe to move the flash up and kill the red-eye. The shots work out very well. The F100 TTL has never let me down, and the flash has always been ready to fire.

 

I'd love to bounce the flash, but in most cases the banquet/ball rooms have very high ceilings. If I were closer like you are, I don't think I'd use a 50mm. I'd pick a 35-70, or 28-80 f2.8 zoom because then you can frame quicker than moving up and back, and you might have tables in your way that prevent you from getting where you want to be.

 

As others have said get with the person giving the awards, and tell them where you are going to stand. Have them not let go of the award until you give them the thumbs up on the shot. Most of the time the people will stop just before getting off the stage because they see me, the offical photographer waiting for them. This is one time when having a big rig pays off, they can spot me.

 

As for changing film, have it ready to go in a pocket so you don't have to search for a new roll. Start the rewind on the F100, then reach for the new roll.

 

This last year things were a little different for me. The wife took the candids of the people on stage with the same setup except for a 105mm lens. I had a backdrop and a monolight setup in the back of the room. We had one person direct them from the edge of the stage over to the second helper that got them to fix hair, remove name badges, etc. I took the formal shot, third helper recorded the names as I was taking the next shot.

 

As someone else talked about the PC cord, yup, I did have it fall out once or twice while trying to keep up with pace, so next year it's duct tape or a radio slave. I can't use an IR trigger, to many people in the room using flash.

We still use our FG at times. We have used a Sigma AF lens, and many Nikon AF lens, no problems at all. We have also put Nikon AF lens on a much older Nikon FE body, again no problems.

My worst F mount lens was a Vivitar 70-210 f3.5 I think it was an AIS lens. At the time I didn't know how bad it was, low contrast, and poor colors. The other one that I didn't like was a Sigma 28-80 f3.5-5.6 AFD, flare, flare, flare, even with the hood that came with the lens.

 

I should have known better, but I didn't buy either lens, they both came to me in an odd way. I now use a Nikon 35-70 f2.8 AFD and a 80-200 f2.8 AF-ED for that range of focal lengths.