allan_jamieson2

<p>There was also a later made 100mm macro lens which was supposed to be better than the 135mm version but I have never seen or used that particular lens. However when I had my Pentax 67/ 67II outfit I did have the 135mm lens for a while and have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by it, it can focus reasonably close but nothing like as close as a 35mm/ full frame macro lens can and with the weight and bulk of a Pentax 67 moving the camera on a tripod in fine increments to get the best composition and focus isn't all that easy either.<br> I found the 135mm lens okay for general landscape type use but too close to the 105mm lens that I had to want to carry it in addition to my other lenses. At one time I had the 45mm, 55mm, 75mm, 105mm, 135mm and 200 mm lenses, sold the 75mm lens pretty quickly just not all that great optically and whilst the 135mm lens was decent enough optically I couldn't justify keeping it when I could get so much better macro images using at that time a 35mm film camera with Tamron 90mm lens. I think if you are looking for a more general use lens the 165mm lens would be a better bet, far enough away from the 105mm focal length and a bit easier to use than the tricky 200mm lens which required very careful handling even with decent tripod and head as the tiniest movement when the mirror was thrashing around could and did blur the images. It took a small camera bag with another lens in it hanging off of the 200mm lens barrel and the palm of my hand pressed firmly on the prism to calm everything down, even using mirror lockup but doing that always gave me pin sharp images and not doing it gave me complete mush!</p>

<p>I'd second the recommendation for a Canon Pro 10 printer, I bought one of them last year when they were being sold off with the newer version being launched and am getting extremely high quality prints from it. It isn't a cheap option once you factor in the inks and paper costs but it is always there and it can be left for weeks, even months and then used again with zero clogging. So far I've only used Canon inks with it, just to make sure that the image quality stays consistent but have used a variety of papers, again mainly Canon ones but have also had very good results with Ilford Galerie Prestige Smooth Pearlpaper, which is much cheaper than the Canon alternatives if you buy it in large packs.</p>

<p>Main issues with any printer are running costs, i.e. how much ink does it use and what can you replace it for. Some printers need to be used fairly regularly to keep the heads clean, others not quite as much. Check out online reviews for the printers that you are interested in, image quality is crucial but what you don't want is a printer which just guzzles ink up. Some models offer option of bigger ink cartridges which can be less expensive in the long run.<br> I chose a Canon Pro 10 last year when they were selling them off and for my occasional printing needs, it does the job very well, never clogs, no banding and image quality is always excellent. I can look out for deals on ink cartridges on eBay and on Amazon and have picked up quite a few replacement ones that way, handy as you will find that you won't use all of the different ink colours as much and don't really want to always buy a full set of inks as you'll just end up with a drawer filled with inks you'll never use and of course be short of the ones that you do need!</p>

<p>Plenty to look at if you explore in and around the coast down there. Starting maybe with Caerlaverock Castle which has a nice triangular shape with a moat, then you've got Threave Castle x 2, the original old ruined castle with river running past it and the NTS one with nice gardens and red squirrels. Sweetheart Abbey is worth a look at too as is of course Glen & Loch Trool. Just a few starter suggestions but the coastline is like a softer more lush version of parts of the North West Highlands, interestingly different, an area that most people tend to overlook unfortunately.</p>

<p>I'd recommend getting one of the later models too. I used a GSW690II for many years and it was a great camera, I still have it sitting in the back of a cupboard somewhere!</p> <p>If you can get a decent mk II or III GW or GSW camera I think you'll be pretty happy with the results. One thing to remember is that these cameras are better or maybe more easily used at full infinity in landscape type photographs. Even with the 65mm lens you need to sometimes fight to get enough depth of field if you are trying to capture everything from the immediate foreground to the far horizon in sharp focus but optically smaller apertures are nothing to be frightened of as the results are usually very good. The 65mm is approximately equivalent to a 28mm lens full frame at least left to right in landscape format but actually feels quite panoramic as it does not have the same field of view at the top and bottom of the image. A slightly wider angled version of this camera would have been better and I think that the original GL690 did have a rare 50mm lens which would have been nice to try.</p>

<p>Do you mean half of each roll of 10 was blank or quite literally you had 5 blank rolls and 5 properly exposed rolls of film?<br> If it was the former, film spacing issues are not uncommon with the Pentax 67 and I had that before with one older body but when that happens what you get is a good exposure and a random unexposed gap then another exposed frame and so on, you might lose the last 2 or 3 frames of your film but won't realise it until you get the film developed. But if you quite literally had 5 blank films and you are sure that they were all correctly exposed, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that the lab which developed your film might have made a mistake in developing the film, very rare to happen, but not impossible. Worth getting your camera serviced in any case just to make sure that everything is working correctly.</p>

<p>Getting complicated there Edward! Nikon DX is 1.5 so 300mm x 1.5 gives you 450mm FX equivalent, multiply that by 1.4 for the teleconverter and you get 630mm FX equivalent multiply that by 1.3 for in camera crop of your image and you get 819mm. But with a camera like the D500 you might be as well to leave it in full DX mode unless you are really going to need that kind of focal length as I doubt it will be very much slower and it might give you better options for cropping afterwards.</p>

<p>Plenty of options if you really only need to print up to A4 which was the maximum size on my last printer but I picked up a Canon Pro 10 printer last year when they were being sold off and I have to say that its image quality both at A4 and A3 is exceptional for images taken on my D800. It doesn't seem to mind sitting for weeks without being used either, never had any banding or gaps like I used to get with my Epson printer. I'm sure there will be plenty of other suggestions here but the option of printing A3 occasionally is rather handy and it can go up to A3+ size too, which I haven't tried yet as I can't seem to find ready cut card mounts that fit that size and/or off the shelf frames to fit that combination within the UK.</p>

<p>Mark there should be plenty of threads in the archives here on this very subject but saying that I have owned about four Pentax 67 cameras in various forms up to the 67II last made model and tried quite a few different lenses along the way too. All that I can do is recommend the lenses which I liked using most and which gave me the best results. The widest lens available non fisheye is the 45mm, which I found very good, there are two 55mm f4 lenses, I had the first one which I found excellent but the second version is reportedly even better. You've got two standard lenses, I had the 105mm which I found very good to use plus the last version of the Pentax 200mm lens which was very good if used extremely carefully, i.e. I used to hang a light camera bag over the lens barrel plus using MLU and pressing down on the prism when releasing the shutter. If I didn't do that images were not sharp even with a heavy tripod and good ball head.</p> <p>Tried the earlier version of the 75mm and 135mm lenses and didn't particularly like either of them, the later 75mm lens of different optical design was supposedly much better than the first and there was a newer 100mm macro lens which was also reported to be very good. Longer lenses than the 200mm would need careful handling but there were two different 300mm lenses, again the newer and more expensive one giving the best results from what I have heard from another photographer I met who was using one of these lenses many years ago at Elgol on the Isle of Skye but that would make for a fairly heavy camera bah carrying all of these lenses. There were also two zoom lenses, which were again supposed to be pretty good.</p>

<p>If you have a full frame Nikon body and like taking wide angle landscape photographs using ND Grad filters etc then the 16-35mm is a very good option. That's the lens that I ended up buying just over a year ago and it gives superb results on my D800. There are always other options but with an exposed front element the Tamron 15-30mm is going to give the same issues as the Nikon 14-24mm, i.e. you can buy adapters and get over sized filters to use with them, but you will need pretty deep pockets if you go that route and you will be carrying possibly two filter systems with you which can add to weight.<br> The only thing about the 16-35mm lens is that online reviews seem to suggest a certain amount of sample variation with it, the copy that I have seems to be extremely sharp with my camera and I really can't fault it at all, even though I do tend to prefer prime lenses and as others have said the 18-35mm lens is a good option too if you don't need as wide as 16mm plus it is lighter and cheaper too. Remember too that your 17-55mm lens was only giving you the equivalent of about 25mm on full frame, so 16mm is far, far wider, so the 24-85mm VR lens already suggested is a much nearer match to that lens, so the suggestion of that lens with the new 20mm lens is actually a pretty good one.</p>

<p>Like you I wondered many years ago if using a larger film format would give me an edge in macro photography, I had been using at that time an Olympus OM4Ti with a Tamron 90mm lens and getting fantastic bitingly sharp images. So I bought a 135mm Pentax lens for my Pentax 67 (and later 67II) and experimented with it and also my 200mm lens and a Pentax helicoid extension tube that I bought. Complete waste of time, many images (particularly with the 200mm lens) were fractionally unsharp, depth of field was tiny even stopped down (remember that a digital DX camera has more depth of field than FX and for every film/sensor size larger than that you need to stop down, more and more to get enough depth of field and it was nowhere near as close up as I was getting so easily with the 35mm outfit. The 135mm lens was a lot better and easier to use but just not truly macro, I think the newer 100mm lens would be the best option if you want to give this a go. However trying to move around a camera like a Pentax 67 even with a heavy Benbo type tripod and very solid head was very tricky for precise framing and tiny movements. That camera gave me great landscape images but was very disappointing when used for macro. I'm not saying that it can't be done, just that in these days of high resolution full frame digital SLR cameras with Live View zoomed right in, that way is so much easier as you can instantly see if you have a good image. With the Pentax 67 it will cost you a lot of film to maybe get lucky. Try it by all means but there are easier ways to get good results taking true macro photographs and not just images that are a bit closer than normal.</p>

<p>I definitely wouldn't recommend the adaptall version of the Tamron90 mm lens on digital either, I still have one from my film days and whilst its sharpness is still hard to beat, it does generate some rather unpleasant coloured highlights in the background if used on digital cameras. If you can get one of the newer AF versions of this lens actually designed for digital cameras and for the Nikon F mount I think that you will be very happy with its performance. Alternatively the older version (one before the heavier current model with VR) of the Sigma 105mm macro lens is also very good. I take it the taxes only apply to brand new camera equipment? If that is the case, then maybe your local eBay might be an option to find decent secondhand macro lenses at affordable prices.</p>

<p>Spec for spec Apple always charges a premium for computers made from much the same parts as their Windows only rivals. It is down to the individual consumer whether they wish to pay that higher price for these products. Personally, I prefer using Mac's but that is my preference and if you are using mainly Lightroom and Photoshop I doubt very much if it would make any difference to the end results you are able to achieve working with your images. That "difference" is mainly in the design of the products and what feels to me a more user friendly feel to the whole experience. If using your computer is that bit more enjoyable , then the time spent working with it can be just that little bit more pleasant, kind of like the choice you make buying a new car, many choices at different price points, made from similar components. Whichever car you choose you will still get to your destination but have you enjoyed the journey in getting there?</p> <p>The other thing to bear in mind is that most Mac's have a much better residual value than their PC equivalents, i.e. you can still expect to get something back from selling a 5 year old iMac or MacBook Pro, which partly offsets the higher initial buying price. For instance I am typing this on an iMac which is somewhere around 6 to 7 years old and is still working very well with Lightroom and Photoshop, albeit maxed out to 16GB RAM. Or you can go the PC route and upgrade more often which should be more affordable due to the lower initial purchase price.</p>

Found this apple in my sisters garden just sitting on the lawn underneath a fairly ancient apple tree, the really odd thing about it is that it had a fairly visible word "Tapio" impresed into it. I have no idea how on earth that could have happened naturally and I don't know how you would do it on purpose either. Funny thing when I looked up the word to see if it meant anything it turns out that according to wikipedia it means: Tapio is an East Finnish forest spirit or god, who figures prominently in the Kalevala. Hunters prayed to him before a hunt. His wife is the goddess of the forest, Mielikki. He was the father of Annikki, Tellervo, Nyyrikki (the god of hunting), and Tuulikki. Fitting the Green Man archetype, Tapio has a beard of lichen and eyebrows of moss." There have been a few odd things about that old apple tree in the past, a small boy was terrified of it one dark winters night as he said there were men in white robes dancing around it... Well you wanted freaky, can't say I've ever seen an apple like that before and I can assure you that the writing wasn't added in Photoshop, it is what it is!<div></div>

<p>I was in much the same situation earlier this year trying to get an ultrawide lens for my D800, with the widest lens that I owned being a Zeiss 21mm. I tried a new Samyang 14mm lens from Amazon UK which was a spectacular failure, obviously a defective lens which was only sharp in the very centre of the image. Obviously didn't expect Zeiss quality for the much less expensive price but a lens like that should never have escaped the factory! Most people are luckier with this lens but quality control is obviously optional in that factory. Next option was the Nikon 16-35mm lens, I know that the 14-24mm lens is better optically but it makes filter usage a much more expensive option. Like you I read the many reviews on the 16-35mm lens and found some people saying superb and others that it was very poor. Obviously some sample variation coming into play again but I persevered and found one listed as near mint with Ffordes in the UK for a reasonable price. So I contacted them and asked them if they would take some photos with that lens on a D800 at 16mm and f8. They did that for me and I examined the images carefully and couldn't find anything to fault them at all, nice and sharp even to the edges unlike that Samyang 14mm lens. On that basis I bought the lens and have used it mainly at the wider end since then and found it to be extremely good.</p> <p>So, if you have the same concerns that I have you could talk to Ffordes and ask them to do something similar for you too. Currently their website is showing three 16-35mm lenses for sale for the same price of £649 each.<br> http://www.ffordes.com/category/Lenses/Nikon/AF/Nikon/Others</p>

<p>Simple Economics I guess, the research and development costs for them to get such a camera to market would make any such model hugely more expensive than their current full frame camera models and probably wouldn't sell in high enough quantities to give them the return they would expect on their investment.</p> <p>If they thought that there was a good market for such a camera, they might well make it but there are probably a few more years of sensor tweaking to maximise the performance of full frame cameras before that would even get on to the drawing board. But, there has to be a limit to how much better you can make full frame sensors before the possible future improvements become so miniscule that many users will stop upgrading their cameras as often. When that day comes the quality difference from using a substantially larger sensor in an "affordable" body would be massive compared to even the very best full frame camera but only if sensor costs come down substantially for larger sizes than what they are at present. In which case it might come about more rapidly if major camera makers could agree a new standardised lens mount for a new larger than full frame sensor size, like a kind of jumbo version of micro four thirds or a reinvention of true medium format with image sizes much nearer to 6 x 4.5 cm or even 6 x 7 cm. Instead of manufacturers doing similar but slightly different sizes, some kind of a recognised standard would help to get the critical mass you would need in user numbers adopting a new system.</p> <p>Saying that, for what I am doing just now I really can't complain about the image quality I can get from my D800 and am at an age where I don't really want to start to carry bigger and heavier cameras again!</p>

<p>If landscape is your main interest, wouldn't one of the D800 series cameras be more appropriate? I'm not knocking the D610, just pointing out that with good technique 36mp does have quite an advantage over 24mp, even before you've chosen which lens to put onto your camera.<br> However, if you just take landscape images occasionally then something like the newer Nikon 18-35mm lens with the D610 would be a very good lightweight option, which would still produce first class results and you could easily add a Nikon 50mm f1.8g to it and still be far less expensive than either of the Nikon 24-70mm lenses. That would be my choice but then I tend to like the wider angled end of landscape photography.</p> <p>By preference I would use prime lenses but that isn't always possible, I bought the Nikon 16-35mm f4 lens earlier this year and use it mainly at 16mm and am amazed at how good the images that I get from it using my D800 are. If 24 to 70mm is the main range you tend to use, I'd suggest as another option the new Nikon 24mm lens with either the 28mm or 35mm f1.8g lenses and the Nikon 50mm f1.8g, used carefully with mirror lockup and on a tripod, prime lenses like that will easily match and even beat the image quality of either Nikon 24-70mm lens.</p>

Well after a lot of trial and error, I have funally managed to get some decent prints out of the Pro 10. Main issue is that to get images even remotely similar to what is on screen, I have to heavily adjust colour saturation and/ or vibrance in Photoshop which is less than ideal, otherwise images are too cool, even a bit on the cyan side. I did get my screen calibrated about a year ago (iMac 27 inch non retina) but on that occasion I borrowed the colour calaibration device from the camera club but it did seem to really reduce the screen brightness. However I was getting very accurate colour prints from the rather basic Epson SX200 printer, looking at some images that I printed before on that printer they might be better printed on the Pro 10 but getting the colours matching looks to be tricky! But I do have a new MacBook Pro Retina to setup this week and I will transfer some of my images onto it, to see how they look on its screen and then maybe try printing a few from it.

I've used a Bronica ETRS 6 x 4.5cm, various Pentax 6 x 7cm models and a Fuji GSW690 II (6 x 9cm). The image quality of all of them was very good but for looking at the transparencies on a light box, bigger is better every time. A Mamiya 7 outfit could be very nice with a 50mm and 80mm or maybe 43mm and 65mm. But the so called Texas Leica, alias Fuji GSW is an incredible camera for the money, albeit one with a fixed 65 mm lens roughly comparable to full frame 28mm horizontally but less wide vertically. For experimenting with a lighter weight option like the Bronica ETRS/i models would also be very good.

I'll give it a few more attempts before I admit defeat! All the same Canon did not do a very good job with their on screen manual, i think things would be a lot easier if it had been checked and written by someone who actually understood photography and printing, rather than just translating a complex technical document from Japanese into English! I pushed the paper in as far as it would reasonably go but to my eyes that still looks a little bit far away from the rollers which would need to pull it inside the printer. Not the best of designs being polite about it!

I bought this printer about six months ago when they were being sold off, managed to set it up fairly easily but found the screen manual difficult to use/ understand and after a long struggle only managed one A4 print which printed well enough but darker and cooler than the on screen image. I did calibrate the screen some months before that which gave very accurate results with Photoshop and my previous printer a simple Epson SX200. I put the printer to one side and only came back to it last night, spent about three hours and couldn't get even one print out of it this time! Connections with computer are fine but it seems that whatever I do, it always ends up with the orange error light flashing three times. Sometimes it says that there is no paper loaded, when there is, other times it thinks it might be jammed, initially it couldn't work out if the ink cartridges were the right models when I turned it on but it seemed to calm down and eventually recognised them! Probably on occasion I might have been trying to use the wrong paper feed area, the back bit is the manual feed and the top section is for multiple sheets etc but I think the manual refers to that as the rear? I know that the printer is capable of producing great images but if I can't get it to actually print anything, that is kind of academic. I've searched online to try to see if there is a book or something online but am wishing now that I'd picked something a tad more user friendly. Maybe there is a knack in getting it to actually feed the paper in, I've pushed the paper in as far as it will go inside the guides. Funnily enough I have a virtually brand new Canon office printer which failed completely after only a few months use, issue being it won't feed the paper through any more. Probably should have stuck with Epson at least their printers are easy to use!

Personally, I wouldn't touch the older 75mm f4 lens, had that years ago and didn't think much of it at all. There is a newer f2.8 version which is supposed to be much better. As for the 55mm f4 both mk 2 and 3 versions are very good and the Mk 1 is best avoided unless you like huge filter sizes. The 45mm f4 lens is also very good too. There is a 35 mm lens too but ai think it is more of a fish eye type lens. Enjoy your new camera, great buy at that price!

Joe it is set to Matrix Metering but as I'm using Aperture Priority it should hopefully still be set there! What I find is that it is very easy to accidentally change the ISO as the smallest touch on the rear wheel control will change it. The D7200 may not be an exact replacement for the D300 but there is no question that I far prefer the control layout of my D800 to the D7200, it is far too easy to alter settings that you really don't intend or want to alter. From what I've seen when you have Live View engaged you can't change your aperture without first turning Live View off, then changing the aperture and then turning Live View on again. I'm guessing that the designer who thought that this was a good idea doesn't like photography! Surely this could be fixed with a firmware update? As for the metering, I find that my D800 can be left in Matrix Metering with very good results for virtually all of the time, sure you can under/ over expose according to what you are trying to achieve photographically. The equivalent metering on the D7200 does not behave at all in the same way, it is consistently inconsistent but loves to over expose. Maybe mine is faulty, I'm not sure, that could be awkward if it is as I bought it new from eBay UK but although the camera came in UK packaging intact except that there wasn't a UK or any warranty card with it. The camera seems to have come into the UK via Hong Kong, the seller says it is guaranteed by them for a year, I did complain that this wasn't made clear in their listing, they actually gave me a small refund because I gave them Neutral Feedback because of the missing warranty card. No question that it is a new camera, this seller has sold lots of them on eBay, maybe I should ask Nikon UK where my camera is actually meant to be under warranty, it's barely a month old.

Thanks Joe, that wireless remote does sound very much like what I had for my D90 years ago, I know I still have it, the question being where exactly! I'll check out Live View to see if the amount that you zoom into an image affects the way that it works, pretty sad that Nikon couldn't have also allowed you to change aperture in Live View on the D7200. It seems like a fairly basic function which someone taking macro images is going to want to do, just to get the aperture which gives the most appropriate depth of field for that image. Honestly, they launched the D800 with a fantastic sensor and awful Live View, then improve Live View in newer models but take away some of the functions which make it user friendly! As for the overexposure, it is troubling me a bit, never experienced a digital camera so prone to over exposure. The camera handles well, has great resolution and autofocus but stumbles far too often with what I regard as fairly simple scenes to expose for, where the D800 would work flawlessly and even the relatively simple D90 could do it far better. I did try a D80 before that and it had a slight tendency to overexpose but nothing like the D7200. I'm using the D7200 in Aperture Priority controlling the ISO to keep it as low as I possibly can, might need to use Manual more with this camera to see if I can regain control of exposure, so much for technology!