sammm

There have been W/NW on the people photography forum and on the Minolta forum.

 

I'm a fan of W/NW, and would regularly visit such a forum. But if setting it up meant not having W/NW postings on other forums, I would not like it, since I think the W/NW features help build traffic for those forums generally.

Ah, thanks, Tim. Apologies for not understanding.

I think this is very interesting and useful, but does contributing that much space on a page to a histogram rather than comment or discussion put too much emphasis on the ratings?

 

My suspicion is that most photos will show a curve around the average rating, and that the most interesting histograms would be ones that show two lumps (e.g., some get it, some don't) or the few that show the "piling on" of 6s and 7s (with attendant 2 word effusive but useless comments).

Thanks, Antony, you've got some nice shots there. I especially like the shot from the DC metro.

 

I've visited your site from time to time and found it very useful. Looking forward to the ongoing expansion.

For detective work you may want to try here: http://www.photo.net/gallery/photocritique/one-critic?rater=820643&period=2000 , where you can see what Dawn has rated highly. It's a good selection.

 

Appreciation often crosses genres, and the images we take are often a narrow slice of those we admire. The problem of people rejecting entire genres but still rating them (whether those genres be babies, nudes, abstracts, manipulations or flowers) is I think an individual one that runs across genres rather than one attributable, for example, to those who take kid photos.

Anyone can go look at the last 200 photos you have rated 6/6 or above on your community members contributions page. I regularly see who else someone finds interesting. And it is a good way to see a lot of the photos that have been posted here for a longer period.

I continue to adhere to the outdated notion that good, honest ratings will help people learn, help keep good photographs worthy of critique visible, and do the entire photo.net community a service. Please, keep rating, and keep rating pretty much the way you are. If enough of us pretend the system works well, it just may start to work well.

 

My average has drifted from the 4.7 or 4.8 range so that it is now almost 5.0, but the drift mainly comes from spending more time rating images in the files of people whose work I truly admire. In other words, it is a result of changing viewing habits rather than of changing rating habits. Yeh, some folks get annoyed when you give anything that brings their ratings down, and the people who get most annoyed are the one's who have a photo with an average north of 6 whom you give a 5/6 to (hey, it means I like the photograph alot!), but I just ignore that at this point.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a hard freeze here, and a relative was commenting on a view he had of the sun setting over a partially frozen ocean.

 

His comment: I saw how beautiful it was and wished you were there with your camera!

Greg's recommendation on additional lenses is right on, and I'll second it. The 50mm is the most useful lens around, the 135 is a good medium telephoto lens that is on the long side of the portrait range (85 -135) and on the short side of the animal/bird range (don't try distant songbirds with it!), covering a bit of both.

Thanks, Csab -- but I'm just at the beginning of this journey. I like a bunch of yours, as well.

 

Thang, I especially like the California Poppies.

 

Here ( http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=316701 ) is another Minolta photog I've noticed (he had a POW a few weeks ago) with just a few photos up but all very good ones.

Excellent points and great picture, Christian (though I think you want to watch that horizon line a bit ;)). I can feel a cold wind sweeping across that scene.

 

My shot above was taken with a little 300si and a 50/1.4 (a situation where the 1.4 was appreciated!). I don't have the setting (the 300si doesn't give them to you - all automatic with a vengance), but it was handheld and a longish exposure.

Ah, I saw your other posting on Nikons and now I see this one -- you already have the camera I would recommend!

 

Put your money into lenses, not a new camera. The 28mm Vivitar is probably a so-so lens (Vivitar has a couple winners, but most are pretty bad). And maybe into a bit of a check up for the camera if it has been around a while.

First, I'd recommend the section on "how to buy a camera" in the learning section of photo.net. It is very useful.

 

Next, I'll give you some very different advice: for your first camera, check the photo.net classified for a good used camera, perhaps a mostly manual one, from someone who seems to have a good reputation here and who will verify that the camera is in good shape. Get a camera that will make you really think. My old Mamiya Sekor DTL 1000 is such a camera. You will be able to buy a variety of used lenses very cheaply at auction or from the used camera dealers like B&H or KEH, and you will learn more about the basic operations of a camera that doesn't have a safety net (also known as the "P" setting). And don't get hung up on brand names -- if you look at the photodo.com site that ranks lenses, you will find unevenness in the quality of every brands' glass, and you will find a much bigger world than Nikon and Cannon.

 

I did this the wrong way, and started off with an automatic everything, then figured out I wasn't learning enough and went looking for the manual.

I'd suggest we simply always mark W/NW files as such, and then those who prefer the non-pictoral formats can avoid them.

 

My observation: the W/NW postings bring more people to these forums and improve all the threads. Even though I agree that a lot of the pictures posted in W/NW (especially in the Leica forum) aren't the photog's strongest work!

And while it may be cold outside, it's warm inside!<div></div>

I'm a big fan of W/NW, and hope we can do more of them on this forum. Thanks for starting one, Jay.

 

However, I am going to bet you live someplace pretty warm - where's the snow!

I was debating this recently, and got some feedback on here that the 28 mm is a bit of a dog (if you search on the word "bowser" you'll find the thread) with a lot of distortion. I ultimately decided to go with a 24mm Minolta used from KEH; the cost was under what the new 28 would have been, and the feedback on the 24 seemed good.

 

Other good advice I got, however, included the idea that the 28 was really a very good size, giving you a wide/normal angle without giving you too much of the "wide" feeling. So it was a tough decision. I expect to get the 28 someday; for me, this was just prioritizing which lenses when.

I note that this week's POW emerged from a Minolta 7. Der, the

photographer, does some very nice work. And he took it with the

basic 50/1.7 lens.

 

Does anyone want to bring attention to other particularly strong

Minolta photographers on photo.net?

For everyone who has been trying to drive ratings by resubmitting critiques, may I suggest that you spend the time instead giving useful critiques on other's work?

 

This also results in more people looking at and often rating your work, and does so while adding to what others get out of the site rather than by elbowing others' photos out of the queue so yours can get another shot.

Another approach for a temporary fix would be to increase the number of comments shown on the "community contributions" page, where right now it shows about a half dozen of the most recent comments. I also tend to go back and click my past comments to see how discussions I've been participating in are developing.

I'm ready to bid against Andrew on the grip. Possibly the lenses, too, especially if they're primes. But I've got my 7.

By the way, you can still get superslide mounts for the square 126 and 127 format films, as well as 127 film (I haven't gone looking for 126). The 127 cameras include some real beauties - my most recent upload is from my Yashica 44, but I keep looking for a nice Baby Rollei...

http://www.photo.net/photo/1593900

Since the comments were deleted, so I don't know what they said, from both the photo and the photographer's comments in the discussion, it appears that the photograph was posted with the intent of provoking a discussion that goes beyond the photograph itself.

Steven,

 

I'm curious as to why you think the 28mm/2.8 is a bowser?