robert_roaldi1

Every market has its suppliers. If you are publishing a local travel brochure and need a 2 inch square photo of a rural barn you are NOT going to pay $200 for a 300 dpi 58 meg tiff. A 4 mpix pic off a mico-payment site that costs a buck is all you need and all you are willing to pay for.

 

And the reason that people contribute pics to those sites is that the incremental cost of taking that shot and uploading it is pretty close to zero. If you have 5000 of them available for sale, it can be a not insignificant sideline, certainly one that can be worth your while, depending on what else you have going on. Of course, 20 cents for a photo is a joke. But if you sell it 1000 times, it's not that big a joke anymore, considering you did NO extra work to get each sale.

 

The high-end sites such as Alamy and "designpics.com" are great places but their requirements pretty much dictate owning top of line 12-16 mpix digital slr's or medium format backs. Nothing wrong with that, but overkill for a 2 inch square pic of a barn for a grainy travel brochure with a production run of 5000 or a weekend newspaper insert.

 

A friend who manages call centres recently told me that they shut down their centre in India because it became too expensive and they are moving to cheaper Manila. That is the world we live in. Did you think photography was iummune?

 

The most irritiating aspect of those stock sites is their insistence on judging submissions based on 100% pixel magnification, out of all proportion to the photo's final use, but that's their prerogative, I guess.

"I'm dubious Foveon would've succeeded under the best of circumstances, but tying it to some goober oddball lensmount made failure very, very certain."

 

It seems to me that you can argue that the Sigma lensmount is not very popular but it isn't any more "oddball" than any other mount.

I may think of dumb features later and add them but right now all I can think is the almost universal absence of infinity focus on p&s type digicams. I had it on a couple of cameras and it was surprising how often it was useful.

It's a 2 second repair per pixel per photo. If you have 500 photos, with 6 bad pixels on each photo, it's a boring nuisance that I'd like to avoid. In any event, for someone like me to tends to buy 2nd hand and expects to keep equipment for a while, the acceptance of this seeming inevitability is not something I am happy about. What it means is that I have one more thing to worry about when shopping used equipment and that the problem will get worse the longer I keep a camera.

 

But maybe it's like dust on slides that you're trying to scan. It's bad but maybe it's as good as it's going to get.

I am no expert but having several such pixels (hot, stuck or dead, no matter) seems a bit much. I have a G3, an older camera, and have only one pixel that is "stuck" at some value or other after 3-4 years of steady but not constant use. I would be tempted to search for a better example.

 

(BTW, I am assuming mine is "stuck" since it has the same value regardless of subject matter and exposure, but I didn't read that site about bad pixels so am not familiar with the nuances.)

 

I regard it as unacceptable to have to post-process these "stuck" pixels all the time. I can live, but not like, having one after 4 years, but once you get into the half dozen and up, it begins to try my patience. It's only my opinion but I think that some people are too forgiving of the manufacturers in this regard.

If they made a large sensor high-end digicam with a 20-70 (35mm equivalent) zoom and an accompanying model with similar features but with a 70-200 zoom, that 2 camera combo would fill a lot of photographer's niches and might be lighter and cheaper than buying one D-SLR with multiple lenses. For those who don't mind EVF, the combo could work well.

I have asked similar questions in the past, as have others, and the responses are interesting. Some folks take the attitude that if a few pixels out of several million are "bad", what's the big deal. I don't agree with this. A new camera should work as promised since that's what you paid for. Insist on a replacement because it's not working like it's supposed to.

 

I know that manufacturers can re-map bad pixels but it isn't like mapping out bad sectors on a disk drive. Doing it does affect the picture. Of course a few re-mapped pixels will not be noticeable in the real world but what's the cut-off? How do you find out which, if any, have been mapped out? This has ramifications when buying 2nd hand cameras. I'd like a way to find if the 6 mpix camera I just bought has 10 or 100 or 1000 re-mapped "bad" pixels so there's no easy way that I know of.

 

I have a 3 year old Canon G3 with a stuck pixel and I resent having to worry about it. In some scenes it can be seen by the naked eye at less than 100%.

Sorry, I messed that previous link.

This <a href="http://anusf.anu.edu.au/~aab900/photography/cameras/cameras.htm" >link</a> provides listings of cameras that were compatible with Pentex screw-mount.

On one of those shows, don't know which, the flash always go off twice for every picture. Any reason for taking 2 indentical pictures? With slides, I could see it, I guess.

I can't answer all your questions, especially not the wildlife ones which is probably what you most want to hear about, but I will tell you what I know. You didn't say when in September that you would be travelling but the best odds for fall colours is later in the month to mid-October. By mid-Sept you can expect very cool nights and mornings though; day time highs will be 20 degrees Celsius, 68-70 Fahrenheit. In early Sept everything will still be green in normal years. Freak weather can always happen of course.

 

September seems early for hunting season. I usually associate that with October but I am no expert. In near north Ontario the deer and moose season is late October to mid-November but you'd best check with the Quebec tourism or hunting sites for exact dates of various hunts. The duck and geese seasons may be earlier but those hunters tend to be in marsh areas along waterways and not in the mountain parks. Any hotel/motel you book with will also be able to tell you about hunting season dates.

 

The area is not flat but rather hilly, as soon as you venture more than a 1/2 hour's drive north or east of Quebec city. You'll be in the Laurentian mountains in many of the parks you mentioned. If you go to Grands-Jardin, you'll be in the Charlevoix region, which is an arts community haven and very picturesque, famously so. Parc des Hautes Gorges is not far from Grands-Jardin and worth a trip if you enjoy canoeing or kayaking on calm waters. Saguenay is known for its whale watching. When I was last in Grands-Jardin around the middle of September, there were lots of fresh black bear evidence on the hiking trails.

 

Starting about 1 hour east of Quebec City the entire north shore of the St. Lawrence is very scenic. Don't be afraid to drive north from the river along the gravel country roads; they are ok for cars and not rough logging roads, although there are some of those the further north you go. Any good detailed map will show the accessible roads.

Thanks very much.

This may be a dumb question but I can't find any reference to it on

the sites of the auxiliary lens manufacturers. When you attach a lens

to the front of the G3, which is what I own although I am also

interested in a more general answer, say a 2x tele or 0.72x wide

converter, does the camera still auto-focus properly or do you have

to switch to manual focus?

Depends. If they are for digital equipment then the odds are that the boxes will retain their value long after the cameras become worthless. This is similar to stereo equipment boxes where it was more important to keep the boxes for future house moves than to keep the electronic equipment itself.

It's interesting to watch the evolution of markets and the seeming trend toward semi-monopoly domination. I wish I understood these things better. I have seen many times on these pages when a newcomer to the hobby asks advice about equipment, that one of the predictable responses is that Nikon/Canon will give them more future expandibility should their hobby turn more serious. I always find this comical because 99.99% of the cameras that are bought (both pre and post digital) end up collecting dust in dresser drawer bottoms. But perfectly good equipment from Oly, Pentax, Minolta and others gets ignored because Canon offers a tilt/shift 24mm lens that 6 people bought last year. As if Oly/Pentax/Minolta/etc won't be good enough for them. It's odd because the choice is not made based on functionality or price, because all of these systems offer largely equivalent equipment at similar prices. But for some reason, the fact that Canon makes a top of line 1v ends up affecting the buying decision of someone buying a Rebel with kit lens who will likely never buy another lens. To my mind this is such odd behaviour.

 

This phenomenon happens not only in photography, but in all other markets as well. How else can you explain Hummers? Photography just happens to be what we talk about here. And so a bunch of companies making good product at good prices disappear and there is no clear cut reason why, other than some need we humans seem to have to validate our decisions based partly on what our neighbours will think of us. What! a Pentax? you're not a serious photographer! And Oly cuts 30% from their staff.

 

Human behaviour is a huge mystery to me.

I guess I agree with other respondents. You seem to think that somehow this dealer is SUPPOSED to take in trades. Why would you think that? It was obviously a business practice that made sense at some point because there existed a market for 2nd hand gear. If that market is now gone then it's gone.

 

We can't have it both ways. If the market place has tilted towards large monopoly internet equipment sellers so that we've turned away from small outlets to save a few bucks, why do feel outrage when the little guys disappear or ask for deposits for expensive gear?

I checked my dictionary and it claims that "kitsch" is a painting of the last supper in velvet with a neon halo over Jesus' head. But if the seller is working out of a sidewalk stand near a gas station, then it's camp.

Artificial "Brand A' vs "Brand B" discussions puzzle me. Unless you own one of the companies, why would you care? What does it mean to be "disappointed in Nikon"?

 

Threads like this really amount to free advertisment. Why do we feel the need to do their advertisement for them?

In answer to the last poster, the fees are charged by the shipper, UPS or FedEx, not the seller. You might try phoning them and asking but mu guess is that somewhere, somehow, there was some fine print that you are supposed to know about and which states that you agree to pay. I don't know if this is true or not, but in the past it's happened to me and I just bit the bullet and paid. The percentages involved would create envy in loan sharks. I don't know what all the in and outs are, but all it means to me is that I refuse to deal with them.

 

I think you're stuck and will have to pay unless you want to put up with their collection departments. And since it's the shipper's fee and not the seller's, sending the item back doesn't get you anything since the shipper will still consider you in default.

 

Outfits like KEH and others employ professional shippers who understand these things and so if you ask them to ship via post office or use Expedited services with known upfront costs, you're ok. Otherwise you're at the mercy of the shippers. I have been nailed by both UPS and FedEx.

Frank, I don't know enough about the locations near Cornwall to say which species is predominant. All I know is that I have seen both. I'll have to defer to other posters and to the bird watching sites.

 

And, btw, I used to live in Toronto and know exactly what kind of a mess the geese make along the waterfront and in the parking lot where I used to work. I watched a TV documentary about the problem of urban geese and the situation can be improved by including marshes in waterfront areas, and not just converting everything to parkland. The birds prefer the marsh over the grassy lawns. But once you get past a certain number, there's just too many of them.

Soon. I live in the Ottawa area and in the last couple of years I have noticed that the geese, both Canada and snow, migrated throughout April, depending on the weather. It's getting warm here now very quickly and I have heard Canada geese honking already up in the sky.

 

There are nesting sites near the St. Lawrence river near Cornwall, and all along the Ottawa river east of Ottawa all the way to Montreal. Both these rivers are dotted with marshes along their banks. There is a large snow geese area just east of Quebec city, near Montmagny. Try googling bird watcher sites.

If there is, it's not a minute too soon. There should always be a price war on.

This <a href="http://www.pc.gc.ca/">site</a> should help. I find it difficult to imagine that there would be a campsite that isn't surrounded by a beautiful scenery.

It will mean active participation on your part. Throughout your photographic life you will have to monitor the support for whatever proprietary file format you happen to use (e.g. Nikon D70 RAW). If they announce that they are dis-continuing support for that, or that Nikon and Canon are merging or something, you will have to "do" something to be able to use those RAW files.

 

If you take a break from photography for 15 years, like a lot of amateurs do from time to time, you will have to "do" something in order to preserve your old images, the same way you'll need to "do" something to preserve your old tax returns or spreadsheets or other important correspondence. That is, you will have to ensure that you have backups, that the backups can be read and restored to use, etc. Once the data, whether photographic or otherwise, is digitized it implies that you must take steps to preserve the integrity of that data. It will not necessarily stay intact all on its own.

 

In the "old" days, you could leaves negatives in a drawer in your parents' house when you went off to college and return to print them 25 years later when your kids have grown up. In a digital world, you have to operate differently.

Everything you want to know about using flashes with various Canon digitals is <a href="http://www.botzilla.com/photo/G1strobe.html">here</a>