harry_akiyoshi

Ok, Jim, correct me if I'm wrong here, but a 35mm frame is 1.42 x 0.94 inches. At 2700 d.p.i, that's 3834 x 2538 pixels, or 9.7 megapixels. Why does a digital camera need 22 megapixels, when output from a scanner only needs 9.7?

 

In fact, I think that the D100 will probably produce a cleaner, sharper file than a low-end scanner will under most circumstances. It might not need nearly as many megapixels to replicate the print quality.

I'm shooting with film bodies and scanning the chromes/negs. It's not a bad way to go, really, although becoming proficient in scanning takes some people a lot longer than others. I was already pretty familiar with Photoshop and with digital image processing in general, so it wasn't a big stretch for me.

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Currently, my film and processing costs run about $700 or so a year. When I can get a D1x or equivalent for $1000, I'll probably have to do it. It kinda kills me, because right now all of my film cameras are so small and simple. I'll continue to use film in medium and large format for some time to come, and I'll still shoot black-and-white, but I think digital will completely replace my use of 35mm color film. And then I'll have to lug around some battery-guzzling behemoth of a camera to get quality not quite as good as I used to with Provia. Oh well. . . I can't afford not to do it at some point.

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But like I was saying, consider buying a film scanner in the meantime. You can get one for $300 or so that will usually do better than Wal-Mart, especially once you get to know how to use it.

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Alternately, you could easily get into medium format for $2000 with a Pentax 6x7 system and an Epson 3200 scanner. Your prints will be stunning compared to what you're seeing now. If you wanted to do better, you could get a Mamiya 7, which is a terrific camera with incredibly good lenses (although more expensive), but I don't think you'd see the difference at that print size.

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The order, in terms of quality (well, especially of capacity for rendering fine detail, since "quality" is kind of an ambiguous word), goes something like this: <BR>

1. Medium format scans. <BR>

2. Good 35mm scans. <BR>

3. D100 output. <BR>

4. Wal-mart 35mm scans.<P>

 

Weight that against the fact that digital is more convenient to use and cheap once you buy in.

A couple of people have recommended the Bogen 3047 head. However, I just bought a 329 a couple of weeks ago, and it's brilliant -- I'd definitely recommend it over the 3047.

It's completely a personal preference thing. Cartier-Bresson used a 50 / Winogrand used a 28. In the end, the act of picking a focal length and really getting to know it is more important than the actual focal length you pick -- you know, unless you go and buy something like a 600mm f/4. On a practical level, you want something easy to handhold, reasonably sharp, and with a wide enough angle of view to shoot from the hip without framing errors. For me, this means anything from 50 on down.

 

I personally do most of my street photography with a 35. I find that it opens up space in interesting ways, and it's easier to work close to your subjects. But like I said, picking a focal length is more important than what focal length you pick.

Ektachrome p1600 is a good choice. It's grainy as anything, but the colors hold well. Expensive, though.

Test a roll before you cross-process something important. It's a little unpredictable -- you never know a particular film will respond until you try it. As has been said, virtually no one uses Sensia 200, so I doubt you'll find good data. Also, since you're shooting slide film, I'd assume that your professor wants you to end up with slides, not negatives.

You don't have many options. You can push your film, you can pull it. Push it three stops and shoot it at 1600 for lots of grain and high contrast, plus moderate color shifts. Most E6 labs will do this for you for something like $1 per stop.

I thought about the CV 90; it is a very good lens, no doubt about it. However, I thought it was awkward to use on my Bessa-R, especially considering that I already had a 100mm for my SLR.

 

On trying the 75, I found that I really like the focal length. You get a narrower field of view than a 50, but no too much "tele" look; it's pretty easy to isolate subjects, but you don't compress perspective as much as with a 90. I like it a lot for portraits -- it just seems more natural (plus I like to work pretty close to my subjects). The actual lens is quite good at 2.5, better at f/4, brilliant at 5.6.

 

See if you can get ahold of one for a week or so before buying; it's really a personal preference thing. If you want a lens to get you closer to your subjects, you probably shoot a 90 or a 135 (if you could figure out how to focus a 135 with a Bessa). I use my 75 more like a long normal than a telephoto, and I love it. It's exactly what I needed.

And here is a sample from a lens I think you'd do well to consider.<div></div>

A sample photo. . .<div></div>

The 35mm 2.5 Series E is kind of unspectacular. It might not be that much better than the 28mm lens you already have. Nikon makes much better 50mm primes than 35s, in general, the exception being the old 35mm 1.4, so I'd suggest that you pick up a 50 f/1.8 or f/2.

It's very, very hard to get a really good one of these. I finally gave up on mine and got a CV 75mm 2.5, which is sharper, smoother, smaller and focuses more accurately. A good purchase, I think.

 

I actually really liked some of the photos I took with the Jupiter-9, but it was just inconvenient to use -- I didn't want to dedicate a body to track with it, since that body wouldn't work with any other lenses, and it wasn't possible to fix it to track on a normal body. Believe me, I tried. I'm pretty good with lens repairs, but it wasn't possible -- the pitch of the threads was wrong. I got by with it for a while by knowing approximately the focus error at different points and compensating for it manually. Worked all right for most stuff. . . but I'm definitely much happier with the CV 75.

I have a Yashica-Mat with no letters or numbers attached to it. It works well. Just make sure you get one with the Yashinon lens, and not the Yashikrap or whatever it is. Get the four-element one. And whatever you do, make absolutely sure that you buy a hood before you try to shoot with it. You won't believe how much difference it makes.

 

Alternately, you could look at the slightly more expensive Minolta Autocord. The lens is about the same as the Yashinon, but they're better-built and the film-winding mechanism is superior.

Funny -- maybe I've remembered the 50 incorrectly. I do remember that the optics were thoroughly mediocre.

Birds are fast. I mean, seriously, bird photography is some of the hardest nature photography there is to do. You're not going to get flight shots with this combo -- if you focus manually, and I think that you will have to, you'll notice that the screen is so dark that it's difficult to focus accurately at all. It's possible for static subjects, but if it's moving, forget it. Focusing any long lens with an effective aperture of f/11 at the long end is going to be very, very hard to do quickly.

 

The best cheapest lens over 300mm is probably the Tokina 400mm 5.6; go longer than that, and all the options are expensive. You can do a lot with a 300mm or 400mm lens, though -- have you tried a blind? Or shooting from a car, if that's possible? I'd encourage you to fully explore your options. The 2x converter is not the way to go, and I think you'll find most other lens options prohibitively expensive.

The macro feature on the 70-300 zoom is of limited usefulness. A better bet is to buy a 3T or 4T Nikon close-up adapter and use it with an 80-200. The Nikon 80-200 f/4~5.6 is actually a decent lens to do this with, plus it's pretty cheap. It's not a stellar lens, but it's certainly adequate for most uses.

 

However, it won't be easy to use indoors without very high-speed film (think ISO 1600 and up) unless you shoot in very, very well-lit rooms. For shooting indoors, by far the best thing you can do is buy a 50mm 1.8. They're cheap, sharp, and fast enough to use in very low light.

Not on HBO, but I did see it some time ago. I was fairly impressed with it. I actually liked "Ricardo, Miriam, y Fidel" (another Christian Frei film) a lot better, even though the only version I could get ahold of was subtitled in Swiss. My Spanish is pretty decent, though.

Sekonic L-308BII. It's very small and very accurate. I use mine for everything, and it fits easily in a pocket.

VC lenses vary all over the place in terms of build quality. The 28mm 3.5 is quite well-made, for example -- a really solid little lens -- but the 50mm 2.5 is pretty flimsy.

 

I've tried a lot of VC lenses, and I own the 35mm 2.5 Classic and the 75mm 2.5. They're good lenses. The 75 is markedly better than the 35, both optically and mechanically, but the 35 isn't bad. It's not Leica, and the finish is coming off a bit, but I'm satisfied with it for the price. A lot of it is a matter of personal taste -- I'm not very hard on my gear, generally, so I find the VC lenses pretty adequate in terms of build quality. If I need to pound nails I'll use a hammer.

 

If the feel is very important to you, buy Leica. A few VC lenses (28mm 3.5, 90mm 3.5) are almost Leica-like, but most of the lineup is still trailing by a significant margin. Optically it's a much closer race.

The 55's bokeh varies all over the place as you go from infinity to 1:2. Sometimes it's quite good, but at others it's pretty awful. Close-range-corrected (CRC) wide angles do this too. It's not a lens that I pick up when I want to make pictures with smooth backgrounds.

 

The 50/2 is quite good, though -- of all the lenses we're discussing, I think it delivers the prettiest rendition. Good contrast, good resolution, and it has a certain smoothness to it that the 50 1.8s lack. Nikon is really a photojournalist's system, and most of their lenses seem to me a little bit harsh; punishingly sharp, but kind of ugly in certain aspects. That particular lens always seemed like a noteworthy exception to me.

The 55mm 2.8 is a terrific lens -- it pretty much lives on my camera. But it is

much larger than all of the other choices we're talking about, and it's slow.

The 45mm 2.8 is also slow, but at least it's small and it works with autofocus

cameras. For astrophotography, especially astrophotography without a

motorized tracking system, I'd lean towards something faster.

 

If you think you'll get into macros later, though, the 55 is an incredibly sharp,

incredibly versatile lens.

The new Astia 100F is brilliant stuff, just so you know. Clean, accurate, holds

highlight detail remarkably well. I bought five rolls when I got to New York a

month ago. A 12x18 print from 35mm had no perceptible grain -- and the

colors are absolutely right on. If it weren't so expensive I'd buy 50 rolls

tommorow; as it is, I'm going through it a bit more slowly.

Just as a side note, not all of the Series-E lenses are that great. The 50mm

1.8 is good, as are the 100mm 2.8 and the 75-150 zoom. The wide angles

aren't nearly as impressive -- especially the 28, which I remember being a

real dog next to the 28mm 2.8 AIS.

The best 50 Nikon has ever made is the 50mm f/2. If you find one, make sure you get an AI or AI'd version -- Nikon hasn't made these in a few years, and the really old ones won't work well with the FM2.

 

Be aware that any manual-focus optic you buy in this range, excluding the 45mm 2.8, will not meter with low-end modern bodies. If you buy an F100 or an F5, you're fine, but the cameras from N80 on down are incompatible.

 

If you're very keen on being compatible with a future AF body, the 50mm 1.4 AF-D is quite the lens. It's worlds better than the manual-focus versions of the 50 1.4, none of which I recommend. The AF 50 1.8s are good optically, but they've always seemed awkward to me to focus manually. A personal preference thing, but something you might look into.

People have mostly covered the techical differences, so I guess I'll just say something completely subjective:

 

TMAX has always looked very sterile to me. I can mitigate the effect by printing well, but I'd rather not have to -- I'd rather just have good tonality without trying. Lately I prefer FP4+ (developed in PMK) over TMAX 100 (tried it in Rodinal, also in TMAX developer).

 

Also, despite what someone said about the horrible grain, I really like Tri-x in Rodinal. It's bitingly sharp even in huge prints, and the tonality is great. My negs in that combination are very, very easy to print. The grain is off-putting to some people, but I personally don't mind it. It's a look that suits my work far better than anything I saw from TMAX 400.

 

In general, I find that I'm more and more attracted to the previous generation of black-and-white films -- Pan F+, FP4+, Tri-X. Delta 3200 is pretty great, admittedly, but besides that, I've been consistently more satisfied with non t-grain films.