allan_jamieson2

Be careful with buying a replacement TTL prism as some don't fit very well onto certain bodies. I bought a new P67 camera some years

ago with plain prism and then bought a metered prism ( older style saying Asahi Pentax 6x7) thinking it would work easily, wrong! The

second hand one that I bought didn't fit well at all and moved about a lot even when supposedly locked into place, worse than that the

TTL meter didn't work very well at all, I sent it back and managed to get my money back.

 

Might be worth showing your faulty prism to a repair centre to see if there is any obvious fault with it, that kind of technology is pretty

basic in itself and was standard on many 1980's 35mm camera systems. Failing that, personally speaking I'd recommend buying a good

hand held light meter, which will be far superior in what it can do for you and your photography than any TTL meter.

<p>If the new software physically supports CS4 then you should be alright, hard to know until others have tried it and seen how it works. Assuming you downloaded a legitimate version from Adobe, you should be able to copy the software onto a flashdrive and transfer that to your new computer. If you have only activated your licence key numbers once to activate the software on your current computer, the same numbers should allow you to activate CS4 on the new computer. Otherwise you would need to call Adobe to try to get a new number to activate the software again.</p>

<p>I've still got CS5 and to be honest am barely scratching the surface of what it can do. I'm sure that the newest versions have some worthwhile improvements for heavy Photoshop users but for casual use I kind of subscribe to the old adage that if it ain't broke, don't fix it! So if CS4 does all that you need it to do, I can't see the point in subscribing to monthly payments, I've got no intention of doing that either, maybe worth upgrading my own OS X from 10.6.8 so that I can use Lightroom 6 but that would be enough for me for now.</p>

The gap is too wide between 24mm and 85mm in my opinion, if you could add a 50mm f1.8g in between a 24mm and

85mm lens, then that would work fairly well as you can always crop a bit off of a wider image from the 24mm lens if you

need or prefer to.

 

 

If I were choosing a few prime lenses, I think I'd have to have the new Nikon 20mm and 28mm f1.8g lenses with the

50mm f1.8g and maybe the 105mm macro lens, which is near enough to what I do have, it really depends how much of a

fan of wide angle lenses you are compared to longer focal lengths. No matter what camera model I've owned in the past,

most of my images are taken on wide angle or macro lenses, some with a standard lens and very few telephoto, which

maybe reflects back to the lengthy period of time that I had my Pentax 67II outfit with my longest lens being a Pentax

200mm, which is only equivalent to 100mm in full frame digital cameras, I learned to make do as it were, anything longer

than 200mm would have been too expensive and heavy on that system,.

<p>The older manual focus Tamron 90mm f2.5 lens was and is extremely sharp on film and digital. I still have one in the cupboard and testing it with my D800 I can not fault its sharpness one bit but sadly the out of focus highlights were rather unpleasantly coloured, probably just a lens coating issue but it looks like the current AF version is still holding up pretty well in terms of sharpness.</p>

<p>An often asked question, the truth being that most modern macro lenses are incredibly sharp and used with care will provide stunning results. Live View is your friend zooming into the important parts of the image so that you can get them critically sharp using manual focus for static subjects.<br>

This link shows a small part from an image that I took locally last Saturday morning of a Forget Me Not (Mysotis) flower growing in the wild, I focused on the flowers with Live View and took it with a Sigma 150mm lens on my D800, you would hardly know how small the actual flower is in reality when viewed like this.<br>

http://www.photo.net/photo/18027976&size=lg</p>

<p>The issue really is what you intend to use the lens for, on DX a 100mm lens is exactly the equivalent of my 150mm lens on FX, which gives you plenty of space to work, which is good for flowers and insects. A Sigma 105mm whether the newest OS model or the one before that which I also have is also an excellent lens and surprisingly good at infinity too but I think the Tamron or Tokina would give you very good results too, just comes down to getting the best deal that you can.</p>

For macro photography learn to love Live View and turn off autofocus completely, you need the full control you get from choosing where

your lens is focused and not letting it try to focus by itself, where it will often go in and out of focus as it can't quite work out what to

actually focus on, only you know that bit, that's where your vision and creativity count!

<p>I would think it is purely a numbers game, the earlier versions were around in slightly different forms since launch in 1969, first without mirror lockup as Pentax 6 x 7, then with it in 1976 and then refined slightly as the Pentax 67 in 1989 before the 67II model came out in 1998.</p>

<p>I've used virtually all of these cameras from an old beaten up early model with no mirror lockup to a new Pentax 67 which was a lot better and then a new 67II model. I have to say that the 67II is by far and away the best of the lot, everything is just that bit smoother and nicer, from the built in handgrip which really helps, even the mirror is better dampened and believe me these cameras can fairly kick when that hefty mirror returns to earth! The optional metering prism is an essential part of the 67II, it just makes the whole process of taking images that bit easier than hand metering or the simple swinging needle TTL metering you get on some of the prisms for 6 x 7/67 cameras. I tried a few of these second hand and never got one which would work with my 67 camera, one didn't seem to fit very well and the other one just plain didn't work on that camera. In theory they should work on any Pentax 6 x 7 or 67 camera, in reality maybe not, they do seem to vary more than they should!</p>

There isn't really a right answer to this as you are comparing on the one hand an ultra wide angle manual focus lens with an autofocus

more standard focal length lens with a fast, shallow f1.4 aperture! Each lens has different strengths and weaknesses, different

applications even.

 

 

I have the Zeiss 21mm lens and it is simply superb, the fine detail which it is capable of capturing on my D800 is incredible, so if you

happen to like that focal length, I'd have to recommend this lens. However, as mentioned above here the 24mm f1.4 lens can be useful

for applications like photographing the Aurora Borealis, sadly not something I've ever properly seen yet. But that lens is aimed more at

photo journalists than landscape photographers, others here say get the Nikon 24mm Shift lens instead. I could see that being the more

useful lens for you once you have mastered using it to get the advantage of using tilt/ shift in your photography. At the end of the day only

you can decide what the best lens for your particular needs are.

 

However, given that the recently launched Nikon 20mm f1.8g lens has very good reviews, you could probably buy it and the rather

excellent Nikon 28mm f1.8g lens for less than the price of the Zeiss 21mm and not be giving much if anything away in quality terms. I

dare say that Nikon will get round to producing an equivalent 24mm f1.8g lens at some point and hopefully something in the 16 to 17mm

focal length area too. Remember too that the Zeiss 21mm is rather heavy and can be quite slippery to hold when you are changing

lenses as its grip only has vertical lines on it, ideal for dropping it if you're not very careful!

You've got a lot of wasted space around your rose pictures that isn't really adding anything to your images, was that as

close as you could focus your lens? I do a lot of macro/ flower photography and try to pay attention to the out of focus

background as far as possible, as it can really make a big difference to your final image and you are not getting the best

use of medium format if you are leaving a large emptyish area with distracting colours/ shapes around your main point of interest, dedicated macro lenses make life a lot easier too, standard lenses rarely focus closely enough and adding extension tubes to such a lens makes it tough to get critical focus where you need it. Bigger film formats/ digital sensors tends to equate to that bit less depth of

field and that can be wafer thin at the best of times!

 

I did try to do some macro stuff years ago on my Pentax 67 outfit with various lenses but struggled to get critical

sharpness even with heavy tripods and ballheads, mirror lockup etc, the setup was just too unwieldy and I just used it for

landscape photography after that plus the fact I was getting far, far better macro images using my OM4ti with a Tamron

90mm macro lens, a lens which is still pin sharp on my D800. These days dare I say it, digital SLR's make macro

photography so much easier, allowing you to really zoom in on the critical areas of your image to ensure the focus is

exactly where you want it to be.

 

PS For medium format, I tended to use f11 for most landscape images on 6 x 7cm and you would need to use at least that, even down to f22 or thereabouts, experiment a bit and try to watch out for the out of focus stuff, as you don't want to see stuff like plant labels or path edges, old flowers, plant stems etc and a reflector really helps in getting the light onto your subject, even with a powerful torch pointed at the reflector if the light is poor, just my way of doing things!

<p><img src="/photo/18023159" alt="" />I"ve quite recently bought the Nikon 16-35mm lens to get ultra wide options in my photography and so far it has been surprisingly good, I am attempting to upload a picture that I took with it early on Thursday morning using it at 16mm combined with a Lee Polariser and Little Stopper filter, it shows the River Clyde in Scotland with a local historic bridge at Milton Lockhart in the Clyde Valley. I'll upload some more fresh pictures taken with it into my workspace here. This image looks pin sharp on my iMac but quite compressed by Photoshop to meet the image sizing requirements on this site. The polariser boosted the fresh spring leaves and the Little Stopper helped to slow the exposure down to about 5 seconds which actually gives a partial reflection in the near foreground even though the water was moving slowly in that area. To get this view I had to walk into the river but it wasn't that deep at this point, worth getting wet for anyway, hope it shows up here. If not check out my workspace on this url:<br /> http://www.photo.net/photo/18023159<br /> I was a bit unsure about getting this lens as I usually prefer primes but kind of limited options in and around 16mm but so far no regrets but I will still keep my Nikon 28mm f1.8g and Zeiss 21mm lenses as I am sure they will be just a bit better than the zoom lens at these focal lengths</p>

Can definitely recommend the 28mm f1.8g lens on a D800, pretty hard to beat really. I have tried some of the older Nikon AIS lenses and

some early AF lenses on a D90 and my D800 with mixed results, the 28mm f2.8 AF which is presumably the same optically as the AIS

was poor to say the least as was the AF 35mm f2, 20mm AIS again very poor but in that case I blame a local company who were meant

to clean the lens up but took two attempts which left it dirtier than before with internal cleaning marks! Don't use the Nikon authorised

repairers in Glasgow,they scratched a Nikon 24mm lens too which to this day I never got back as on principle I refused to pay them for

such shoddy workmanship, expensive lesson, always go direct to Nikon.

David's suggestion sounds an easy way to use a standard screw on polariser, which simplifies things greatly for adjusting

shutter speed etc without having to deal with an adapter ring. Meant to say I used the soft version of the Lee ND grads, a

two stop filter of that sort is relatively easy to position by eye but you would need to have the pesky adapter ring again!

 

I loved using this camera and indeed still have it but must admit that the sheer convenience of modern cameras such as

the D800 does make it a lot easier to get good results without having to wait on film being developed and takes away any

uncertainty. I still take images in much the same way but I can see instantly what has worked and what hasn't, deleting

images you don't want is much less painful on your wallet than wasting film in the same way!

This has been asked several times before I'm sure but probably years ago. Yes, you can use ND Grads/ Polarisers with the GSW, I did

that quite a lot pre digital with my own GSW690, using Lee filters with a metal adapter ring screwed onto the lens and the Lee filter holder

clipped onto that. Main issue is really that you will have to constantly take off the adapter ring to alter settings on the camera, some users

used to saw the lens hood off for that reason.

 

I used the square glass Lee polariser filter and just adjusted it by eye holding it against the subject and then attaching it to the adapter

ring, results were pretty good, the lens is only about 28mm equivalent, so gives decent results as long as sun is roughly behind you. I

took some pictures this morning on my D800 with that same Lee Polariser on my Nikon 16-35mm, mainly at 16mm! By taking quite a few

from maximum polarisation and going back from that, I got images sufficiently polarised to bring up the nice fresh spring colours without

very obvious darker/ lighter parts in the sky, which is very easy to get with ultra wide lenses. Issue you have here is that you only get 8

images from one roll of 120 film and won't know precisely what you've got until the films processed, expensive to get it wrong!

Ry

The ND Grads again you can position manually, as long as you understand how many stops you need to adjust from original light meter

reading. Filters usable but not anything like as easily as with digital cameras I'm afraid. The GSW 690 can give absolutely stunning

images in the right hands but it does take a bit of fiddling around to get the best out of it Im afraid!

It's been a while, but I've used and owned about three different Pentax 67 models, I did buy brand new once the exact combination you

have and first time out with it on the very first roll of film the battery supplied with it failed! When that happens the camera is unusable re

as the mirror locks up and wouldn't release until I'd rushed out and bought a spare battery. If you can still take photographs with it I think

you still have some power in your battery but I would strongly recommend changing the battery ASAP and getting another one or two to

carry with you as spares before the mirror locks up on you. The batteries will last a long time, particularly as you are using a plain prism

and not the TTL version, enjoy these are still great landscape cameras and I loved using mine in the years that I had them.

 

PS sometimes the mirror can be a bit tricky to release again, even after changing the battery, well it was with that particular camera,

which come to think of it was replaced shortly after that by Pentax as it had a few strange issues.

<p>There is a scale to fit paper size option in the actual printers menu but I was controlling that side of things directly from PS5 before, maybe there is just that bit more control available in Photoshop than Lightroom!</p>

<p>Maybe a silly question, got some card mounts with apertures pre cut for UK A4 sized prints, which I know are rather different in size to the US A4 version. I've been adjusting raw images at home in LR4 and then exporting files in PSD format to make a few last adjustments with PS5. Using PS5 you can adjust the image size easily to make sure that there are no white borders showing when the prints are attached to the mounts, which means printing an image just under 29cm x 20cm when the photo paper size is 29.6cm x 211cm edge to edge.</p>

<p>However, I had to move the printer I was using to my workplace, where I have a virtually identical computer, except that I don't have PS5 on it, just LR4. I know that I can transfer the images that I want and open them in LR4 on that computer, only thing is when you open up the print dialogue box in LR4 it is giving a maximum printed image size of 27.62cm x 19.72cm. I know that the printer can print larger than that, just can't see how to do this in LR4. Maybe something obvious that I am missing here!</p>

<p>If all else fails, I will try to see if I can get PS5 installed on my work computer too, not sure if Adobe will allow me to do that though as I think I might have had it on an older computer at home too, although that one is no longer in use.</p>

I bought the double panning version of the Arca Swiss Z1 a few years ago and it is a fairly good ballhead except that the head is inclined

to stick quite a lot, it might need lubricated but it isn't as smooth as I would like it to be, last time I used it was in cold conditions around

minus ten and as well as being sticky, ice was making it even harder to move the head and I really had to use quite a lot of force to free

the head. I know you're not supposed to use oil to lubricate a ballhead, just wondering what the best approach would be to use here. I

wondered about using some dry graphite like some shavings from soft pencil lead rubbed onto the head?

Correct Shun! I wanted the D3X years ago but just couldn't justify the money to buy one at the original very high prices, Nikon messed up

big time with the pricing of that model, which must have been a very low selling camera world wide. I've never actually even seen one to

be honest. Hence, why I ordered a D800 when it first came out as by comparison to the. D3X it seemed almost a bargain price wise!

 

For what I'm doing, I don't think that I need any higher resolution than I already have, although smaller and lighter would be good and I

would love to see the D810 sensor in a smaller body like the D750 with the fold out screen. That would seem a logical thing to do as

would a 24mp sensor in a D810 type body but Nikon don't seem to think all that logically at times but these would be fairly inexpensive

ways to give a bit more flexibility to their existing model range.

<p>Given the fiasco that Nikon made of the D800 launch, with initial prices of £2400 which they rapidly increased to around £2600 before the camera even became available and then finishing off with the same cameras on sale at around £1800 just before the D810 launched. I'm not surprised that they are having to work a bit harder to get people to upgrade into a D810. I'd love one for the improvements in the Live View alone which is my main criticism of my D800 but am not prepared to sell it for less than half what I paid for it when it is still in excellent condition and working well! I am never buying any new Nikon product at launch again as the initial UK prices are to put it mildly on the high side compared to America and always seem to tumble within months of launch and any initial quality control issues will have been addressed by that time too, which has been a bit of an issue for Nikon recently with the D600, D800 and the D750 too.</p>

<p>I'll keep watching and if at some point I do have enough spare cash and I can get a D810 maybe nearly new for a really good price, then I might buy one. If Nikon do a 50 plus megapixel full frame body then there will be an avalanche of D810's for sale at that time, assuming it is not priced like the old D3X, which I always wanted but could never afford!</p>

<p>This should work well I used to use the older AFS 24-85mm version as a walk around lens when I had my D90 and it worked extremely well, just not quite so good with my D800 but reasonable all the same. Granted the D5300 is going to demand a bit more from the lens but you are only using the centre part of the lens, so it isn't going to be too stretched overall. </p>

<p>Just noticed this, I've actually got one of their tripods,a Frank model, which is a pretty good one for outdoor stuff with my D800, nice and stable and still fairly light weight too. As far as I know their tripods are British, whether that means designed here and made in the far east I'm not sure but they are not knock offs by any means, that is rather unkind to say the least!</p>

<p>I saw someone with a 3 Legged Thing tripod about 1.5 years ago whilst taking a few pictures along the Caledonian Canal at Fort William. I liked the look of the tripod and the user was more than happy with it, very positive. I did some research online, looked into prices etc and then found one near mint example being sold on eBay, I won the auction and really liked the tripod, quite different in some respects to my previous Gitzo but so much lighter to carry around.</p>

<p>Not all good though, took it out about 3 weeks ago to do some landscape photography in Glen Coe and towards the end of a bitterly cold day, one of the legs dropped straight out of its socket! I contacted them, posted it back, expecting to be getting a hefty repair bill! But surprise, surprise, they actually gave me a brand new tripod, which is I think the later mark 2 version. Customer service like that is pretty rare these days, I'm very happy and they actually have a sale on just now on their new tripods which I think come with a 5 year guarantee, so prices are not at all unreasonable for what is a pretty high quality product range. You can of course look on eBay and maybe pick up a bargain second hand example there but I'm happy to recommend this company without any reservations at any rate.</p>

<p>I've got about 4 different tripods just now, an old Benbo Trekker which is great for macro stuff plus three carbon fibre tripods from a tiny Velbon for a walk where I might just take a photograph and I can fit into my camera backpack, a medium sized Velbon Sherpa again easily carried under my arm for longer walks which is actually pretty good and my biggest tripod is a 3 Legged Thing "Frank" which really works well with my D800 and isn't all that heavy to carry around either, much lighter than my previous Gitzo carbon fibre. With careful technique and a decent ballhead I could put my D800 on any of these tripods with wide angle to around 100mm lenses and get pin sharp images, anything longer than that, you really need to make sure that your tripod is rock solid as the issues with image quality usually relate to longer lenses.</p>

<p>You can brace lighter tripods with a bag on the centre column hook, just make sure the bag is touching the ground though. With my medium format Pentax 67II years ago I actually used to hang a small camera bag with a lens inside it from my 200mm lens barrel, that made the difference between utter mush and pin sharp images and that was with a very heavy tripod and substantial ball head too!</p>

<p>As I mentioned recently in another post about Ultrawide lenses, 3 Legged Thing have really good customer service, replacing a faulty second hand tripod with a brand new one just last week for me. Plenty of other good options out there too but for a 70-200mm f2.8 lens I wouldn't be putting it on a tripod/ ballhead combination which is just rated enough to support it. Like others I have had loads of different tripods in the past and usually got rid of them after a year or so, some were just far too heavy like a big Unliloc (Benbo clone) and that carbon fibre Gitzo. A better ballhead and a bit of strategic ballast added to your hook might make that tripod work better for you.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the replies. I've thought about this long and hard and whilst I would have preferred something like a 16mm prime lens to add to what I already have, that isn't really an available option at this point in time. I would have loved the Zeiss 15mm but currently I am really doing this as a hobby, so that would be kind of extravagant!<br>

So, I checked a few online dealers in the UK and checked out what stock they had new and used and found one company with a near mint Nikon 16-35mm lens in stock. I was a bit wary about this lens mainly due to the mixed online reviews, so I asked them to take a few pictures with the lens on a D800 (same as I have) at f8 and 16mm. Got the pictures this morning and I have to say for what were just a few images in their rear car park, it did look pretty good when I looked at it in Lightroom, good sharpness into the corners and into the middle of the frame. Way, way better than the faulty Samyang at any rate, so I agreed to buy that lens and I should have it by tomorrow.<br>

It gives me a few more options as to what I can do with my photography but I am not intending to get rid of my Zeiss 21mm any time yet, the images from it are pretty special and I like my Nikon 28mm f1.8g too, definitely a keeper that one. Hopefully, I can get a chance to get out up to the Highlands again sometime in the next few weeks and get a chance to put it through its paces. <br>

I got one other piece of good news today which I might post elsewhere on the site and that is that my 3 Legged Thing Frank Tripod is being replaced with a brand new mark 2 version which should also be with me tomorrow! I bought a mint mark I version of this tripod about a year ago via eBay from someone who worked for the makers and last time up in Glen Coe, 2 weeks ago, one of the legs fell off the tripod! Temperatures were minus ten that day and things were freezing up a bit, must have been a lot of moisture in the air, even my Arca Swiss ballhead was sticking. Anyway, full marks to 3 Legged Thing for standing by their products, even with secondhand items, not many companies would do that. They are based in the UK and produce a very interesting range of tripods which are mainly named after famous rock guitarists. For its size it is a very strong and stable tripod, they describe it as a studio tripod but it is very capable outdoors when it has all three legs that is!</p>

Strangely enough Amazon UK didn't even offer me another lens as they say they have suspended all sales of that lens by themselves

due to another customer complaining that the lens sent to them was not as described, maybe they got lucky and bought a whole batch of

decentred Samyang 14mm lenses!

 

If I really wanted to, I would just save up for a Zeiss 15mm but kind of hope that Nikon or Sigma might bring out something in that kind of

focal range. The Nikon 16-35mm would be ideal if it were definitely sharp, the Nikon 18-35mm would give me a good 18mm lens for a bit

more than the cost of the Samyang 14mm and be a good lightweight lens for any walks, replacing my Zeiss 21mm and Nikon 28mm

f1.8g. Nikon 14-24mm and Tamron 15-30mm have filter and weight issues but then again so does the Zeiss 15mm, no easy options with

this kind of lens!

<p>I usually prefer to use prime lenses where I can and currently my widest lens is a Zeiss 21mm on my D800, which is a very good lens but sometimes a little bit wider would be good.</p>

<p>I've read the reviews of the Samyang/ Rokinon 14mm lens which is usually reckoned to be a decent budget option even with the D800. I ordered this from Amazon brand new, finally got it early this morning and just had time just for a quick test with it this morning, down by the rather chilly River Clyde at dawn.</p>

<p>I used my D800 on an Arca Swiss Z1 head, good carbon fibre tripod, camera on mirror lockup, remote electronic release, my usual setup really. Took a few pics with the Zeiss 21mm first and then the Samyang 14mm by way of a comparison, both lenses at F8. Both set at infinity pointing towards a bend in the river, with a group of trees away on the far side of the river, some trees roughly in the middle of the image behind the bend and a few to the righthandside. The Zeiss images were as usual pin sharp everywhere that matters, I didn't expect Zeiss quality from the Samyang lens but did expect reasonable sharpness in a fairly undemanding test. The Samyang 14mm images were pin sharp only in the very centre of the image area,, none of the corners (and beyond that) had any sharpness at all, even with minimal magnification everything was mush apart from the very centre of each image! This particular lens would barely work with a DX camera, have to assume that it has a major technical fault and I have already arranged to send it straight back to Amazon. I've heard of lens elements being decentred but never experienced anything like this before!</p>

<p>Just wondering whether there are any other decent prime alternatives to this lens as I am a bit wary about getting another one after this experience. The ideal lens would be the Zeiss 15mm but that is kind of expensive for occasional usage! Older Nikon, Tamron and Sigma 14mm lenses don't seem to rate too highly on D800 type sensors either. That only seems to leave zoom options like the Nikon 14-24mm which is kind of large and heavy, or the new Tamron 15-30mm lens, again large and heavy and not available until mid February in the UK either, RRP here is £950. The Nikon 16-35mm always attracted mixed reviews and the Nikon 18-35mm is quite inexpensive but not that wide, just a pity that Nikon didn't have a new 15mm or 16mm g lens.</p>