maxasst

I dropped mine on the floor, so at 33ft/sec acceleration, it's the quickest and when it was time to stop, it didn't go any further.

It will mount but there are some issues: I have tried what you are considering, using a Tiffen cpl, then a cokin holder with grad filters. What happens in use is that there is very minimal resistance to rotate the polarizer, but when you want to change the orientation of the cokin holder relative to the polarizer, it is quite awkward. Also, I suspect after doing this a few times with the load of the holder and filter, it led to wearing out the part that retains the rotating element of the polarizer such that it simply popped off it's mounting. So, the cokin holder is cheap if you want to experiment, but I'm hesitant to suggest that on your B+W CPL's and risk failure.

 

That being said, I'd mount the cpl as normal and just hold the flat filters up to the lens and take a picture. If I need to keep them for any short length of time, I use blue painter's tape to hold them in place. No load on the cpl, there's a brisker setup and a lesser chance of vignetting the picture.

I have taken pictures of baptisms and depending on where I can place myself, I use different lenses. Primes to me are too limiting because at times I want to get a closeup of the pouring of the water, then zoom out to get the facial expressions of those gathered. If I am standing right at the sacristan, I use a 20-35mm f3.5-4.5 zoom. If I need to stay at the pews and the baptism is at the altar, my 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 is usually good enough on a film or digital camera body with flash use. This is my preference because I like having a variety of pictures to share with the family, not just standard group shots which are fairly easy with any of the lenses mentioned above. I take out the 50mm when I have time for group pictures, and it really has a marked benefit on the background exposure. In fact, when it was my son's baptism at a typical dimly lit church, I handed my backup EOS 5 with a 50mm lens and small 200E flash to my unsuspecting friend who used Program mode. All his pictures were sharp and had a pleasing background exposure.

Thanks for the responses so far. It seems that the opinions are biased towards underexposure with the filter. I'll add some detail. I have two Cokin glass filters, a Pola-blue and a Pola blue/red. I don't know how many stops worth of light they are supposed to decrease the exposure since they don't have any accompanying literature. I'm guessing that they are linear because they were cheap and I tried looking through them and through a mirror but didn't see that things were particularly darker through the mirror.

I don't mind the errors in autofocusing, but I am concerned about

which direction an error in autoexposure goes. Does the linear

polarizer filter result in an over- or under- exposure? And is it a

linear error? Thanks.

Although not cheap, I tried the Canon wide-angle adapter for XL1 and although it widened the coverage a little, it was just heavy enough that the lens mechanism was binding and would not zoom (I tried it on a 28-105 canon lens). Of course I didn't buy it.

My first "camera bag" was an insulated lunch bag with cut carpet padding to work as the separators. I fit the equipment I had at the time and used it on one vacation. It was very low-end appearing, but served well and gave me an idea what I actually needed in terms of dimensions and accessibility, since there are no well-stocked photo stores nearby. Then I went to B&H where there were shelves and shelves of bags, but since I had my trial bag, the decision was easy to make. It probably would have been easier to do it on their website since the information is very handy for sake of comparison. I hope this helps.

I trust B&H and their prices are great. I don't know what kind of a rush you are in purchasing the lens, but if they don't have your item, you can leave your e-mail and receive a notification when that particular item becomes available. I have also purchased new and used items from Adorama and KEH.com without problems.

I have the 540ez flash and it tilts, but just a little. I don't own or have used a 300 f/4 lens, but if it has a deep hood, see if removing it will allow you to get acceptable results. If your object is too close and the flash is still being blocked by the front of the lens, try bouncing the flash off a styrofoam plate taped to the top of the flash. Set the flash angled downward as it can, and with the the flash manually zoomed to wide setting in order to get the flash to bounce off more off the styrofoam plate for better lighting.

I use the 28-105 on a D60 with the same 1.6x crop factor, and although it is lacking on the wide end, depending on your purposes, that might be just fine, so maybe try the RebelXT with your current 28-105 and if you find that the range is lacking, buy another lens afterwards. This lens serves us quite well for things like backyard or indoor parties.

Bob: I got it, but that was freaky accurate for a Hal. Keep'm coming. It'll pique interest of the young 'uns to look at the classics.

I have been playing with some of the settings of my new (to me) Canon

D60. Under parameters, sharpness, contrast, and saturation are

straightforward, but I can't find guidelines for the "Color Tone"

adjustment.

Douglas, glad to read that you resolved it. May I ask a favor? For our future reference, could you post a picture of the screw that was loose and a picture of the lens/camera at the angle that got the thing unstuck? Thanks.

http://users.ev1.net/~dbdors/Photography/eos_boosters.html

I previously had a link to a site wit diagrams of all grips and battery packs. I'll post it when I find it. For now, here is a good chart.

Jonathan, here is the shell link

 

http://users.aol.com/shellfoto/flash.html

Translucent container of Isopropyl Alcohol from your local drugstore for less than $1.00. Cut off the bottleneck end leaving a nice rectangular box. It might fit too snugly , just slit the ends to allow the flash to enter. Hold it in place with a little blue painters tape or whatever tape if you don't leave it on long. If you like it, then buy some velcro dots to secure it. I use this on a 420ex, and when it's not on the flash, it holds an offshoe camera cord to prevent the cord from scuffing things around it while in the bag. I use the omnibounce on a 540ez (it came with it when I bought it) but prefer to bounce off a wall or ceiling, followed by a softbox (if I'm close), last is omnibounce as this has the least effect.

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The biggest challenge is illuminating everyone evenly. Ideally, with a low (14 feet or less as I was using a single flash) ceiling and a 10 foot circular table, I would aim the flash to the ceiling just above the center of the table with good results. If the tablecloth is white and predominant in the scene, or if there are highly reflective objects in the frame, I add positive flash exposure compensation accordingly but be careful not to overcompensate it. It's easier to "dig" out detail from underexposure than to recover from overexposure. The problem with the on-camera flash and the remote flash is figuring out the proper ratio to ascertain even exposure of all the subjects, so maybe in this situation, point both at the ceiling at the same spot over the center of a circular table, or at the points 1/4 and 3/4 along the sides of a long table as far as aperture will allow and bounced if possible. If you have the opportunity, a flashmeter and a mock setup at the location prior to the event would be best. I hope this helps.

How are they with shutter lag?

Sorry, here's the ambient light shot.

Last sample from quite a distance.

Another sample

Here are some samples

I faced the same situation under less formal conditions (it was my daughter's Spring Performance in pre-K class), held at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, where they performed on a real stage with floodlights and background of dark grey to black. The subjects were wearing white shirts and blue jeans. Using the 420ex on our D60 at iso 800, I took pics with and without flash. The flash pics turned out very nice and natural, natural to me is there was some color bias from the flood lights, but exposure for skin was still good. I used a 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 lens on the D60 at a distance of 40-50 feet. I also brought an EOS5 with 70-210 f/4 lens with 800 Supra film, but the digital pictures turned out much cleaner. The D60 was set on Manual with wide open apertures and shutter speeds at close to the reciprocal of the lens being used.