jeff_rivera5

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to stick with my current setup and may or may not bring the 50mm on non-primarily photo related trips. As to the quality of the 75-300 zoom, at f8 it's quite good for my purposes. And for the price I paid I can afford that much more travel.

 

Cheers.

I know ultimately I'll have to decide on my own but thought I'd solicit opinions. When traveling primarily for non photography/leisure reasons what lenses would you take? I have a 24mm f2.8 AIS, a 50mm f1.4 AIS, a 35-70 f2.8 AFD, and a 75-300 4.5.5.6 AFD. I can fit all this plus some filters, a mini tripod, and an extra battery into a Timbuk2 small messenger bag. But, it weighs a ton and with the 75-300 in the bag, the balance is thrown off a bit and it just barely fits standing up.

 

I'm thinking of dropping it from my everyday carry/light travel kit and only bringing it when I'm reasonably sure I'm going to be shooting birds or anything else that I need the reach for. Of course the downside is what if I miss (insert X cool bird or car or plane or whatever) a photo? I am leaning toward leaving it behind most of the time. The other option it so leave the 50mm behind, but you still have the ungainliness and size of the tele-zoom.

 

Thoughts? My photos fall into the general travel/landscape/people mode with the zoom getting the bulk of the work.

KM

"On a 10-14 day trip you should have enough time to explore the area and wait for the beautiful light that is the photographic signature of these parks."

 

My son is 4 and my daughter is 2, so it's questionable how much time I'll have to scout and re visit sites looking for perfect light :-).

 

Thanks for the suggestions, should be a good trip.

This has been brought up in the past. I think it's a great idea but I wouldn't hold my breath. The powers to be get nervous with to much free speech....just like a certain president I didn't vote for.

Go get 'em Albert!!!!!

I will being going on a family trip (wife, kiddies, and me) to Zion

and then Bryce NP for about 10-14 days over Thanksgiving. I am looking

for suggestions of interesting and lesser-known photographic subjects

in the area. I am also interested in general suggestions on how to

interpret an area that has been photographed heavily in new ways. I

have a few of my own already, and will share some of my successes (and

failures) when I return.

 

Any feed back is appreciated.

Hey guys, thanks for the input. I also appreciate the offers, but I'm going to go with the Manafratto. I let you know what I think after I use it.

 

Cheers,

Ok, the Leica table top is great but it's TOO MUCH MONEY :-) !

 

What's the next closest thing? I'm consdiering either the Gittos or

Manafratto ball heads that can support around 8 pounds (both around

$35 from B&H). Are the manafratto legs 3007 any good? Any others?

Your suggestions would be great. This will be used for my DSLR and TLR.

 

thanks,

I've been thinking about this off and on ever since I got my Pentax

DSLR. Does anyone know anything about this?

 

I emailed Gandy and he said he doesn't have them (though it is

mentioned on his site, he only has Nikon and EOS). It shouldn't be

too difficult to mix M39 to M42 to Pentax K adapters with the right

spacing. Are the viso lens heads threaded M39?

 

Anyhow, if you have any info, I'd appreciate it.

What really sucks is that you could get an Eico HF-81 integrated amp kit for about $75, put it together, learn something, and have a stereo that was just awesome!!!! Have you priced those things lately on eBay?

 

And of couse, I missed all of it!!!!! Didn't get the tube bug until recently so now I'm digging into old books, learning to read schematics, and will hopefully build a pair of PP 6BQ5 monoblocks early next year.

You could do the finder and zone focus if you want to.

 

With the crop factor, remember that a 24mm = 35 field of view. At f4, you've already got decent DOF. I'd shoot AE using the AF center spot (use it just like an RF patch) and not worry about it. Works well with my Pentax DSLR.

Is it going to allow you to save work in 16 bit? It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if you couldn't save converted 16 bit RAW files in PSD or Tiff at only 8 bit depth. Any one know?

If I've missed a post with the search function that addresses this,

I'm sorry.

 

I find myself using my 70-210 f4.5-5.6 KAF quite a bit with the Pentax

DSLR. However, it really starts to get soft the closer you get 210.

Therefore I want to add either a better tele-zoom or prime.

The 3 combo's I'm considering:

 

Pentax 200 f2.8, 1.4 and 2x converter.

 

Pentax 300 f4.5, 1.4 converter.

 

Pentax 80-200 f2.8 zoom, 1.4 and 2x converter.

 

I'll be using these to shoot my kids at the park (my son is so camera

distracted that the further away I am the better) and wildlife (Desert

bighorns, raptors).

 

I was leaning toward the 200 2.8 which would give 300 f4, 400 f5.6,

and 560 f8 (stacked converters). The big question there is how well

are the converters matched to the lens, ie what fall off in performace

do you get? The 350 is supposed to be a nice lens too, but that might

be to long for some of my work (remember 1.53X).

 

Pentax 80-200 f2.8 is supposed to be nice. I'm wondering about

sharpness at the long end. It should be better than the 70-210 lens I

have now (which is regarded as a decent lens), but might not be a

whole lot better.

 

Any one want to give me their two cents?

Tom,

 

I use v.9 also. What do you think of 12? Is it worth the upgrade? Now that you are back using 9, what if anything do you miss?

 

thanks

I hate these questions, but here goes. Has anyone compared these two

directly or inderectly? The Tamron gives you a little more width and

1 stop faster at the short end, while the Pentax is a little smaller,

most likely a slightly better overall performer, and uses 67 filters

instead of 77. Price is a pick'em.

 

Any thoughts?

Thanks all. I'm going to try SUSE 9.1 from the ROM and see if I can get it talk to my stuff. I need 16bit and couldn't live without lab color for sharpening so I'll have to try and make Photopaint 9 work.

 

BTW I've been using Firefox and Thunderbird from Mozilla for about a month now. Sweet. I really like T-birds junk mail tools.

 

thanks,

Scott,

 

Do you just auto update your stuff or let it go? Maybe an hour is a bit of an exaggeration. It's just that with all the IE and XP security patches (and I'm using firefox now) I do spend a bit of time running update and re-booting.

I?ve been using Windows XP for the past 2 years and I?m tired of it.

The constant patches, the security woes, all the updating, it?s pain

(I don?t think Microsoft is evil, just sloppy). Anyhow, I want to

explore switching over to linux. I need it to be fairly plug and play

since I?m NOT a command line expert.

 

Here?s my setup:

 

UMAX SCSI scanner running Vuescan.

 

HP 7660 printer. I?ll be adding a designjet as soon as they have one

that uses the gray inks.

 

My editing program is Corel Draw/Photopaint 9. I?ll be upgrading to

11 at some point.

 

Can this be easily configured to run on linux (I think Photopaint can

be run under WINE)? Has anyone done this who is less than a computer

expert? What linux distribution is the most user friendly?

 

I?m not opposed to having to tinker a little bit (considering I spend

an hour or so a week keeping XP updated). Any thoughts?

Scott,

 

Can you talk a little more about how you set up your monitor profile or point to a reference on how to do that? Your method makes a whole lot of sense to me rather than dinking around with a bunch of different profiles for everything. Thanks.

So guys, what do you do, just download your card and have them print it? Just wondering what's involved and what in camera processing you do (shapening, ect.).

 

thanks

While not a perfect solution, in addition to storing files on multipile drives, I've started making master dark storage prints. Not a perfect solution to be sure, but it does give me a non electronic copy of my digital files that can be rescanned on a nice flatbed in an emergency.

I'm not crazy, Win XP Pro. Though I waiting for someone to actually do what Lindows promised, be able to run all my expensive MS software on linux. Ah to dream....

Zipzoomfly.com has it for the same money with their 30 return and free 2 day shipping. Kingston memory is priced well too. So maybe a new system by Wednesday? Keep you posted and thanks.

Well, I've monkeyed around with it and can't get it to work. I think it's a memory problem. So...I want to send the MSI board back and get one with the Nforce2 and integrated GeForce4 graphics along with some pc3200 (will that work?). Problem is the two boards recommended MSI and ASUS won't allow returns, only exchanges at newegg. I'm not comfortable with that. Biostar has a board for $64 with those specs. Any thoughts?

 

I need something I can return, because I'm only giving it one more go, if it dosen't work, I'll send the whole lot back and struggle a long with my slot 1 system that has never given me a lick of trouble in 6 years (I can wait for 15 minutes a scan, 5 minutes to unsharp mask)!

 

thanks,

 

(PS power supply is good, it worked great in the celeron system)