todd_west

<p>Tubes are a hassle; a 12 mm tube puts the front element of the 24 TS-E I about 5 mm from the subject so one has to be pretty creative with lighting. For 1:1 the subject would be inside the lens somewhere. Since the 24 TS-E II is longer, clearances would probably be tighter, and I'd be surprised if 17 on tubes was workable at all. Diopters might be viable, but I've moved away from my Nikon 5T and 6T due to problems with field curvature and near zero sagittal MTF. Canon's 250 and 500D are also two elements, so I'd expect similar issues. I have found the 17-40 to be workable on tubes at 1:3 or maybe 1:2 depending on the subject.</p>

<p>That said, in my opinion macro is where movements have the most value. I don't see TS-E and PC lenses offering much value for true macro (around 1:1 and higher)---view cameras still have the edge there though, speaking from experience, shooting 2:1 or 3:1 in the field with a monorail is quite a challenge. Personally I would be delighted to see an updated TS-E 90 with more flexible movements and closer focusing; that'd be a great lens for 1:2 or so. A TS-E 45 II would be pretty viable as well.</p>

<p>I did a fair about of research on mounts last summer with similar requirements and goals in mind. With $800 the best option seems to be Celestron CG-5. Lightweight and portable and works with your tripod isn't going to happen, especially once you add a guide scope and autoguider, and don't forget the complexity of stacking images. Add in the hassle of getting a good alignment on the mount and all photos of a given deep sky object are pretty much the same and my personal conclusion was deep sky photography wasn't worth the money and the time to pursue.</p>

My knockoff showed up yesterday, hitting the 7 day minimum for shipping. Cool. Works fine in studio tests; haven't used it for anything real yet and obviously have no data on anything long term.

I ordered one of the Link Delight Aputure ones about a week ago. Link Delight's feedback on that auction site photo.net doesn't like you to mention indicates their claims of fast shipping are overblown---among other things Link Delight North America still ships from Hong Kong---so I bought on the expectation it'll take a month to show up. So far it's taken five days to toss my knockoff in a box and get it in the mail, assuming I can believe the shipping notice. Their percent positive is high enough I figure it'll show up eventually, though I'm not buying the claimed 7-14 day shipping time either.

I think we can debate the business model for Canon service indefinitely. All I have to say on the matter is it's my personal preference to either do my own work or support shops which only charge for the work I want done (and don't sit on the lens for a while before they start working on it---the Canon tech I spoke said it takes two to four days just to get a lens into their "system" so that someone can look at it).

 

Henry, Puppy, thanks for the answers. Having taken a look at the contact retention screws on the lens mount I decided Steve at Camera Clinic was worth his price (about a third of Canon's minimum) and am shipping the lens down to Sparks.

 

Alan, converting a TS-E doesn't affect the unit holding the optics. The only way the lens can get out of tolerance through the rotation is if the interface at the back of the tilt block was badly machined. This is unlikely to happen and even more unlikely to make it through QA before the lens ships (squaring blocks with a fly cutter is a fundamental of milling). And, even if it did happen tilt could be used to compensate in the rotated position. So I, personally, am willing to dispense with any sort of fancy post-modification checks. As such, I'd prefer not to pay someone to do them.

There's some contact wear on the old 300 f/4 IS I picked up used a while back.

The lens has always been a little prone to losing contact with the camera and

rolling over to aperture 00 but lately it's become quite unreliable. All of my

other lenses are completely reliable with my body and the 300 can be gotten to

work if one doesn't mind spending about ten times as much time fiddling with

the lens as taking pictures. So I'm high confidence the issue is with the lens

contacts and not the body or lens electronics. There isn't a camera repair

shop local to me and, calling around to Canon and a few shops within a few

hundred miles, no one will provide an estimate without looking at the lens

first. So I'm in the unenviable position of needing to ship the lens multiple

places to get competitive quotes, which adds a lot of cost, time, and hassle.

 

Anybody have a feel for what a reasonable cost is for replacing the contacts on

an EF lens or for parts? I'm certainly not mechanically adverse, so pulling

the four screws on the back of the lens and dropping in new contacts is

something I'd be willing to try if it's not too involved and it's possible to

get parts.

 

Looking through the various repair threads back to about 2004 it seems Canon

often ends up being cheapest. Any sense if this is still the case? I called

them a while back about converting a TS-E from tilt/shift to tilt/rise and they

wanted $100 to remove four screws, turn part of the lens 90 degrees without

taking anything apart, and put the screws back in. Which works out to oh, $600

or so an hour for labor. So I'm reluctant to ship the lens down to Canon

Irvine without checking out alternatives first.

 

Repair shop recommendations also appreciated, particularly on the west US

coast. I'm familiar with Associated up in Portland, CameraTechs in Seattle,

and will give Camera Clinic in Sparks a call tomorrow based on forum threads

and photo.net's neighbor to neighbor section.

Yeah, I have an old 300 f/4 IS which recently started going 00 all the time, particularly when it's cold and particularly with a TC. If you pull it off and look at the contacts at the back of the lens there's quite visible wear across the gold plating even though the matching contact balls on my 10D still look like new; I've contemplated rebuilding the plating myself but figure it's probably smarter to fork out to get the contacts replaced.

I switched from a Nikon FM2 to a Canon 10D. Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages; what I'd really like is a D200/D300 style APS-H body I could put the equivalent of Canon f/4 L and TS-E glass on. I switched to Canon when I went digital because Nikon has no proper equivalent of Canon's f/4 L lens lineup and Canon had better body options at the time. The D30/D60/10D/20D/30D/300D/350D/400D viewfinders all blow compared to the D200, but I'm not willing to incur the cost and weight of a 1 series body since I have a budget and backpack with the camera. Just like I'm not willing to incur the cost and weight of Nikon (or Canon) f/2.8 zooms. While used Nikon lens availability is much higher than Canon's due to the F mount's backward compatibility, used Canon bodies are much easier to find; on balance, Canon came out as the lower cost system for my needs. Some additional advantages Canon has for me are greater IS availability (handy on several day backcountry trips where the weight of a tripod becomes problematic) and the TS-Es, which are more capable than Nikon's PC lenses at much lower cost.

 

To Nikon's credit they've done an excellent job of positioning the D200/300 between the 30/40D and 5D, closing the APS-C sensor performance gap, and backing it up with a decent viewfinder. I have some nostalgia for my 25-50 f/4 and 400 f/3.5 AI-S lenses. But the 25-50 wouldn't be much use on an APS-C body and I find the 300 f/4 IS more useful in practice.

It can, however, be easy to accidentally press the lightning bolt button. I've done it a few times without meaning to.

Hey, thanks. I think I was half right in my guess. The foreground in Midford 2 is dull because it's shadowed and lacks chiaroscuro, unlike the sunlight on the mountains. I wasn't there so I can't say for sure, bit I suspect it's probably a bit overexposed, which is why the sky is blown at the right. The situation with Creek is much the same, though contrast is more of problem in that photograph. From looking at the reflection in the water, as other posters have suggested, a grad ND would knock down the sky's brightness and pull it into the exposure latitude of the film. However, that'll also darken the mountains and, in my experience, usually makes dark trees dark enough they lose detail.

 

Unless you were already using it, I think you could probably pull detail in both of these shots with Astia 100F and more careful metering. Astia 100F has a couple stops more exposure latitude than other slide films, which helps a lot, plus I'd bet both of these exposures could be taken 1 AV lower than they were. What I do in these situations is to meter the sky and the ground and then put the exposure basically in the middle of that range. Or just give up if the brightness differential is too large.

 

However, that won't fix the lack of good light on the foreground. Creek's not bad with the water if you crop for square by dropping the right part of the frame, but it doesn't have the right compositional and lighting ingredients for major wow factor. Not much you can do about that. ;~) Milford 2 would be better if had been shot from the other side of the road in the midground, but for it to be really dramatic there would need to be light on the midground trees.

 

In these kinds of situations I usually shoot the mountains with a telephoto (400mm or thereabouts is often handy) and then look for interesting compositions within the foreground which don't include the background. Easier on the film (or sensor---my 10D is not competitive with the exposure latitude of 4x5 Astia 100F sheets) and often makes for better compositions since you're not trying to unify two disparate kinds of lighting.

I'm not sure contrast is the problem. It might be, but from my experience it's more likely the light is just blah. Unless the foreground is sunlit from behind or something, it's not normally brighter than the sky. Nora, can you describe the lighting in more detail or post a sample image?

Don's thinking of Naikoon Provincial Park. I can second the references Bill's cited. If all else fails, hit the visitor's center in Charlotte; it's pretty thorough, down to having a complete set of nautical charts. As to photos, expect lots of rocks, trees, and water. Haida Gwaii is a very pretty place, but most of the beauty is in the details. Bring a 4x5 or medium format if you can; the extra resolution will pay off. I tossed about 75% of my small format shots because they didn't capture the feeling of the place well enough. You'll probably have the best luck with Graham. Moresby's considerably harder to get around.

 

You don't mention how you're arriving in Prince Rupert. The Yellowhead out to Terrace along the Skeena estuary is some of the prettiest highway I've seen anywhere. If you're coming in that way and have time, plan to do a bit of shooting in the area if the weather's cooperative.

 

You need to be an SK-IV sea kayaker to paddle safely on the east side of the Charlottes, SK-V on the west (and if you're not familiar with the sea kayak rating system, you're not experienced enough ;~). If interested, email me and I'll forward you the trip report from the two weeks I spent in Gwaii Haanas this June.

I let my lab worry about all these headaches and just order prints. ;~)

 

12k x 15k at 48 bit is about 1.1GB in memory. A practical working limit for a 32 bit processor (most of the Pentium line) is about 1.4GB, so it's not surprising you're seeing things crash. I've programmed up in that range a bunch and if you do special memory management and fiddle with OS settings it's possible to get beyond it, but from the perspective of working with off the shelf software the best thing to do is to throw an x64 processor at it. This usually allows 32 bit code to consume somewhere around 3.4GB.

I regularly shoot snow and ice and regularly hit situations which max out the dynamic range of Astia 100F (which is about two stops wider than Provia) or of the 10D (about 1.5 stops wider than Provia). Let the specular solar reflections and deep shadows blow and don't worry about it as long as you're not losing detail in important areas of the composition. Dead on exposures routinely require a lot of contrast compression in postprocessing to get good prints. It's usually hard to really keep detail across the entire print since contrast is dropping from ~10000:1 on film to ~80:1 on paper. There's some stuff you just can't shoot well because of the exposure latitude of the film.

 

The only other low contrast slide film is Agfa RSX II. Astia 100F blows it out of the water grain wise, though Astia's latitude is about a quarter stop less. Astia 100F also has a better shaped heel going up to Dmax so the slides look nicer on the lightbox. I switched to 100F when Agfa killed 4x5 RSX sheets and have never looked back.

 

Negative film has much wider latitude but I can't see how it would ameliorate the contrast compression problem when printing. You might be able to get a little bit more out of it since there's more detail in the film, but I'd be surprised if it's a major improvement.

 

I disagree with Shaw's advice not use an incident meter. It's all I shoot with and I almost always shoot straight to the meter without compensation.

Hear hear! Or perhaps a competitor to Nikon's excellent and compact 17-55?

Unless you feel like splashing out for a 50/1 or an 85/1.2 I would agree the 50/1.4 and 85/1.8 are the best options. You don't mention whether it's foil, epee, or sabre but especially with sabre it can be hard to freeze the blade. That may not matter much, since there isn't any AF I know of which can keep a wide open fast lens focus locked to a blade anyway (be interesting to see what a 1D II can do, though---big disclaimer: it's been some time since I fenced and I only had MF gear at the time); your best bets are likely to be compositions where things the AF does grab end up defining a focus plane close to plane of one of the blades. For the most interesting shots, this will likely not be at the fencers' point of closest approach to your position along the strip. I would personally lean towards starting with the 85 since the AF is faster than the 50 (not that the 50 is a slouch) and the narrower FOV will produce less cluttered shots over a wider range of working distance than the 50. It'll be way too long if you're consistently shooting at 15 feet and mainly looking for planar compositions with blades and fencers in focus. My personal experience is that style gets old relatively quickly, however.

"Another load of baloney served up without the mayo."

 

Depends on your perspective. I agree with your 95-98% numbers, but the ~5% is pretty noticeable on a pixel by pixel level. Wether you see it in a print depends on how you look at prints. Besides, all the Imacon labs I've found charge more than the Tango labs; paying more for less is arguably not all that great, I believe.

I have a 10D and a 17-40/4L, 85/1.8, 70-200/4L setup. Forget about using either zoom indoors at night without flash. Daytime shots will usually be OK, but won't have huge margin. For available darkness shooting (ambient light only, no flash) ISO 1600 at 1.8 is just enough. I get a lot of 1/100 or 1/80 shots, but it's not hard to drop to 1/15 in a darker area or if your subject is backlit. I wouldn't crank to 3200 on the 20D; 1600 on the 10D is noisy enough and the two bodies have essentially the same SNR.

 

Besides, would you rather have a /4 zoom and three /2 or faster primes (e.g. 35/2, 50/1.4, 85/1.8) or a /2.8 zoom?

Or get a better filter. I haven't had flare problems with my 17-40 and 77mm Hoya S-HMC pointing into the sun.

Or you may just be realizing how poor anything short of a $70k oil mount drum scanner is. Any flatbed or film scanner I've seen under $10k is not very impressive; banding, noise, areas with low density bleeding light into areas with higher density. Prints at moderate enlargement ratios won't show the scanning flaws as badly as pixel peeping, but you can see them if you look. The ~$15k Imacons are better, but still aren't all that great when compared on a pixel by pixel basis to a drum scan.

 

I'm not saying the Epsons are a bad buy, just that you get what you pay for. Paying a professional lab $65 a print for three 20x24 Tango/Lambda prints buys more image quality than spending $200 on a 1650. What makes sense depends on how much you print and the quality you need.

<p><i>The question is whether I can find the 400/3.5 lens used?</i></p>

 

<p>They're not a dime a dozen, but they're not terribly hard to find. I sold mine a few months ago on e*ay for $800 since nobody on photo.net would buy it at $750. (Go figure.) Superb lens. They're more expensive, but the Nikon 500 f/4 Ps weigh about the same as a 400 and are also excellent. However, a 300 f/4 on current prosumeroid DSLRs provides comparable reach and speed, is considerably easier to travel with, and offers lower noise at the high ISOs which are handy for early morning and late evening wildlife photography. Personally, I would put the money towards a D70 or a used 10D (I got the latter last year, for the same price as I sold the 400 for, actually).</p>

Odds are it's not so much the laptop as the laptop power supply. Was the laptop plugged into AC? If so, does the power supply have a two prong plug or three prong where it attaches to the wall? How many prongs on the supply's laptop connector? Knowing which tripod, the kind of flooring it was on, and what sort of shoes you were wearing would help too.

 

Usually, this kind of stuff happens with two wire supplies, since the laptop ground is isolated from earth ground and therefore floats. Unless unusual ground topologies are used (not the case here) cables tie the computer ground to the ground of the plugged in device, so the camera's chassis ground---and, by extension, the tripod socket---is held at the same potential as the laptop ground. There's usually a few hundred volts of ground bounce between laptop ground and mains ground as the capacitive coupling through the power supply causes the laptop voltages to oscillate as a function of the mains supply cycle. The resulting charge buildup causes ESD events when another conducting object such as your nose comes into proximity. This is one of the reasons why most newer laptops use supplies with three prong plugs which route mains green wire ground to the laptop chassis.

Under $500 or so, in my experience, Nikon typically makes the best binoculars at a given price point. They've refreshed their model line since I last went binocular shopping, however, but the $350 E2s just barely edge out most $800 binoculars from Zeiss and such.

 

The non-ED Swift Audubons are decent as well and right at your price point. For both binos and spotting scopes it is worth the extra money for ED glass, though; the difference in CA is fairly dramatic.

 

Speaking of which, does anyone have any experience with the Kowa TS-504?

Thanks for all the info. Hmm... I find myself still very much undecided.

Low contrast would be like this.