jim schwaiger

How did you meter the lighting? If you metered off of a dark area in the room, the -2 might be pretty decent. In places like this, people often check the room and find the exposure range, then just use manual mode to set an exposure needed for the existing lighting.

 

I think 1/350 will be plenty to stop the action. If you got close, you may get a little blur. Otherwise, 1/125 to 1/250 may have been enough. If you kept records of your shutter speeds, you can learn a lot.

Close enough, thanks!

I saw someone post a link for the SB-28 Manual the other day and I was

wondering if the SB-22 Manual is online somewhere. I know the paper

version can be purchased cheap enough, but I would like a searchable

electronic version if it exists.

A 9 lb hammer is what I am considering using on my XP box. The performance may not increase, but I'll be much happier.

NDs grads are the solution for most nature photographers. I like the rectangular filters that allow you to place the light to dark transition where the horizon is (otherwise you have to center the horizon on every picture).

 

A polarizer can help in some situations as well and is well worth the money if you enjoy nature photography.

Focusing distance is also a factor. If you are getting very close to subjects, it is difficult to get a lot of DOF.

 

To maximize DOF, use the smallest aperture (ie f/22 to f/32), use the widest angle on a zoom and get farther from your subject.

If you want a good quality, low-distortion lens that you can keep on the camera, look at the 28-105mm AF-D. The feel and performance are nice and the price is pretty good as well.

In the Nikon line, I'd go with an N65 or better.

 

Getting a mid to low-end body with a 50mm f/1.8 lens is well within your price range. avoid the cheap kit lenses if you want good glass. Just remember that you are buying into an SLR system. Make sure the lenses you may want are out there and stick with the name-brand lenses if you possibly can.

I have the 28-105mm AF-D on a lightweight N65 and I find that it balances just fine with standard two-handed shooting. I even have a big honking 75-300mm AF lens that weighs a ton on the N65, but it makes nice pictures.

 

I avoid the consumer "G" lenses altogether and any of the plasticy feeling lenses - even if they are optically great, they just feel like you'r holding a Lego lens (no offence lego enthusiasts...) that's at the verge of falling apart..

How wide is "wide"? My N65 gives about 1/8 inch between frames. I don't know what "normal" is for the N80, but it shouldn't bee too far from that.

Aaron, what did you expect on a Saturday in the Fall when the leaves are

starting to change? If you want to avoid a lot of that, you'll have to make time

during the week or find non-touristy places to photograph.

 

I was up in the mountainoua area of Alabama this week, and we are just

before peak around here. Some trees drop their leaves early and some are at

peak now, but the majority should peak next week.

Digital has it's own set of problems for sure. The sensors themselves are not

as perfect as we imagine and they will change over time. A $2000 camera's

sensor will become almost useless after a while. But they will be obsolete

long before then, so who cares, right?

I don't have a spot meter, but I use a center weighter meter to do the same

thing. It may actually work better because it takes into account more of the

area. I simply point to the sky and then the ground to see how many stops

difference there is.

 

To place the filter, stop the aperture down using a DOF preview (or do it

manually). This will help you see the effect much better.

 

If you meter for the darker area and keep that setting, you should be fine, but

there is nothing wrong with metering while the filter is in place. I would not use

the spot meter in this situation, the scene may be too dark to accurately

choose a mid-gray area, use matrix or center-weighted instead.

Also consider the Olympus Stylus Epic 35mm f/2.8. Very small, inexpensive, and it has the flash controls you need (off, red-eye reduction, and normal). Definitely the best little point-and-shoot I've used.

The circles are officially dead. The bookmarks we were using with Rowell do not work anymore even though the forum and the option to submit to the Rowell forum exist, there is no link or bookmark that will let you see a particular circles images (as far as we can tell).

 

Our circle survived until a couple of weeks ago with about 5 to 10 regular participants, but no longer.

I was thinking nighttime captures for some reason. In the daytime, a dark background and decent shutter speed will work.

Long exposures make rain and snow disappear. Try 1/15 or faster. A flash can also help sometimes, but only the closest drops/flakes will show up. You can also shoot close to lights where they will show up easier.

Since you are buying into a system, you need to see if each one has the lenses you want. Also, consider other things like the flash system.

 

In the end, the body is rarely the limiting factor, so don't worry too much about which body is "best". For basic landscapes and portraits, any decent SLR is fine. At the pro level you will need a good flash system for portraits, so I'd lean towards Nikon for their mature TTL flash system.

Expensive tripods are simply more stable and more durable. Note that much of that stability is compromised in the high end tripods with a center column. Galen Rowell trashed the center columns in the tripods he took on long treks, then again he was in a lot of extreme conditions.

 

The heads and such will help a lot as well. You really have to try them out and see what feels natural to use. Even the tripods in the $100 range will be significantly better that the cheapie one -- much less irritating. Consider the lightest ones that can support your equipment if you are hiking for hours at a time. A 10 lb tripod would be more stable than a 3 lb model, but if it's too heavy to carry, it is worthless to you.

To get good results at 13x19 you need a digital camera with about 22 Mega-pixels. By contrast, using 35mm with slow film (ISO 50-100, neg or slide) and a film scanner (2700 to 2900 ppi), you can get plenty of data for enlagements well over 13x19. This assumes 300dpi prints which is a decent rule of thumb.

 

You can gain a lot of control with even a low-end Minolta film scanner and Vuescan software. The cost is having to learn the scanning process and having to organize these large digital files, but the reward will be great compared to the Wal-mart scans.

Rating it at 320 gives about a 1/3 stop "overexposure" relative to the meter which is consistent with the "expose for the shadows" rule for negative film. Assuming there aren't a lot of highlights even a full stop overexposure may be fine.

 

I would use the slowest portrait film that your flashes will allow. If you can shoot at ISO 160, the big enlargements will be a bit cleaner. With medium format 400 speed should be fine, but I wouldn't go to 800 if I were in your shoes.

Fred, I agree that the N80 is a great body and I would do exactly what you are doing. Spend money on good glass now.

 

The macro on the 28-105mm is easy to use, but it does have a couple of quirks. You only get macro at 50mm to 105mm and it does have a switch. To flip the switch back to normal (non-micro) you have to focus beyond a certain point. It's not complicated, just a bit annoying at times. It is a great lens that I keep on my N65 for a general purpose lens.

 

If sharpness and huge enlargements are important, you might want to go with primes instead. The 50mm f/1.8 is cheap and very sharp, so you could buy it and the 28-105mm to compare and see if you prefer the results of a prime lens.

Your spot meter failed you. That is probably because the N65 doesn't have a spot meter. It sounds like you were using manual exposure, which gives center-weighted metering. Even if the lightest part of the image were in the center while you were metering it was probably still suggesting a good bit of overexposure at 1/20. At 1/60 you were probably close to a "correct" exposure.

 

At any rate, the noise in the web image isn't necessarily on the film. Check that first make sure it wasn't introduced in the printing or scanning processes. Or this could be the grain on the film showing, although the clean area at the top makes me wonder about that. What speed film was it?

 

FYI, there is an exposure compensation button that works with Program, Aperture Priority, and Shutter Priority modes, but the camera automatically goes back to matrix metering in those modes. Manual mode was the right choice here and you can see how much you are "underexposing" in the viewfinder. This was about 1 to 1.5 stops "underexposed" according to your meter which expects the scene to be much lighter than this (18% gray).

 

You can try despeckling the image to reduce the noise. You may want to mask just the dark areas and operate on them. Once you mask them. you can also try blurring a few pixels to reduce the grainy look. It would probably take a couple of hours to mask and clean an image like this up, so make sure it's really on the film before you go to all the trouble.

Let it go like water off a ducks back...

 

I think it took a matter of hours for raters to figure out how to bypass the required comments. They often leave a comment like "asdf" or they go back and delete the comment right after they rate the image.

 

In my opinion, the overall rating is a bit high for "Ruff Day" even with the "1" rating in there, so I wouldn't worry to much about it anyway.

 

And some people just aren't going to like some images. He thinks your image is bad and you think his opinion is wrong. Just follow the crowd and go give him some low ratings - it makes it all the more fun (tongue in cheek).

If you like it so much why not check out ebay. You might be able to buy 2 or 3 of them relatively cheap. Maybe buy one that's broke for parts. That way you can continue to use the manual lenses that you know and love. If you have a big selection of lenses for it, stay with Canon manual focus bodies.

 

The manual Nikons are nice because they kept using the same lens mount. Some of the new high end AF cameras let you use the manual focus lenses. Likewise they still make fully manual camera that only require batteries for the meter to work. The obvious downside is that you'd have to buy a different set of lenses. The upside is that manual focus lenses are available and often cheap on the used equipment market because most people are using AF cameras.