calarrick

There are lots of books and web-articles to read about the basics.

 

If you are *really* a beginner you should know that there are really only three core controls on your camera. On a traditional film camera, there were two -- one is the aperture, which is the width of the lens opening and thus how much light can enter it over any given period of time. The other is the shutter speed, which controls the length of time that the camera allows light in. Together, the two control how much light hits your 'film'.

 

Which takes you to part three - with film cameras, the sensitivity of the film you selected took care of this. But with digital sensors you can turn the sensitivity up or down (like the volume on a stereo amplifier). So the control of the 'ISO sensitivity' is your third control that actually matters.

 

Scene modes, etc., just make opaque and confusing something that is really pretty simple -- aperture, shutter speed (exposure duration), and film/sensor sensitivity. That's it.

 

Now you just need to figure out what photographic effect the different combinations of those three elements provide.

 

Your camera does, I think, automate a lot of this. But you still need to get what is going on 'under the hood' to make sense of the results you'll get -- and to understand what is 'photographically possible' in terms of rendering a scene.

...obviously, I mean you'd have to manually focus... duh.

The D40 lacks a focusing motor, -- it will work (and meter, etc) with all the AF lenses, but you'd have to autofocus if you used a lens without its own motor. The kit lenses you asked about both have their own motors.

Here is a thread about that flash (with which I have no familiarity): http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00EgkK

 

Per the company's own description, it seems a bit more powerful but no more full-features than the SB600, which is under $200.

(http://www.promaster.com/products/productpage.asp?sm=sm2_digitalflash&dir=ElectronicFlash&product=7500dx)

I have the 24mm f2.8 AF and the 50mm f1.8 AF-D, and want something in between.

Two candidates seem to be the Nikkor 35mm f2D or the Sigma 30mm f1.4 Other AF

candidates? This lens would be mostly (but if the Nikkor not exclusively) used

on a DX-format DSLR.

 

I know there's lots of talk here about each of these lenses, but how about a

sort of subjective appraisal of the merits of each in relation to the other.

The Nikkor is a focal length that fits my needs a bit better, also works on

35mm, and is less expensive, but it lacks the focusing motor and is a stop

slower. In practice, how much does this matter? In particular, how much have

folks found the extra stop to matter and how much does an AF-S/USM motor matter

on a moderate prime like this?

 

(btw, I like the 24 and love the 50... both are sharp but even in easy lighting

with a hood the 50 seems contrastier and snappier than the 24)

I use a 2gb Sandisk Ultra II in the D80, mostly, and also have a 2gb "basic" Sandisk SD card (no "extreme" or "ultra" or whatever branding). The latter are very cheap. Both work what you'd call "fine" -- but the camera feels a lot more responsive with the faster card. On the (very few) occasions that I used the slower card, I noticed this a lot early, and then got used to it -- it is not a huge deal but does feel noticeable and probably (but I can't verify) actually matters in terms of real-world response (e.g. frame rate) as well. So the slower one has been decreed (and was really purchased just to be) backup. I'd be reluctant to use the slower one for 'response-demanding' things like candid people pictures or any kind of action.

 

If you use 1gb cards and shoot raw, you certainly should get two or three of them even for fairly casual and local (i.e. with download/dump opportunities).

What model is that? One of the Nikkormats, I think, but I'm not sure which. It looks to have gotten the use it was made for.

pack-ice, Lake Michigan

Of course.... alluded to above, and worth no more than hinting at in this thread... the archival qualities (and lack thereof) are perhaps the *biggest* difference between slides and image files. And it is yet another "on the one hand, on the other..." situation rather than a better/worse dichotomy.

 

I'm personally inclined to think that anything captured digitally that I really absolutely think must be kept around for decades needs to be printed and filed away as a medium-to-large print -- that way some form of it will last (or at least only slowly and gradually decay) even if I'm not around or available to be attentive to digital migration, monitoring storage, etc.

The poster has both a Canon DSLR and the EOS 3. I think his concern was that he'd recently been hearing that accessible/affordable real-world scanners (ie not sending everything out for drum scanning) would not do the 35mm justice, and look much worse than what he gets from his 20D. This came as a shock, because he'd previously been informed that 35mm was still superior "informationally" to digital capture.

 

Again, based only on a few weeks of first-hand experience with the two side by side, I've come to these conclusions.

(1) The Nikon Coolscan gets enough of what's there to be gotten out of 35mm that there would be rapidly diminishing returns in any higher-end scanning.

(2) I think that my D80 (roughly equivalent to his 20D) actually is capable of capturing more fine-detail than most 35mm films (though Kodachrome 64, and therefore presumably other alternatives like Velvia, are much closer).

(3) But film does still have tonality advantages and the (subtle)grain of these fine-grained slow films still adds something to the image that can actually be helpful for image quality. A dedicated film scanner will also capture 14-bit instead of 12-bit (I think) which may also contribute to any 'tonal' advantage.

 

All of this, of course, is assuming similar technique and optics -- y'know, comparing the same good prime lens on the same tripod, etc. And is offered in the spirit of being a non-scientific, experiental, conclusion from a perspective that might be helpful to the original poster.

Not expert opinion, exactly, but here's my take from what I'd imagine may be a perspective not so different than yours... (though mostly color-oriented)...

 

I've been dabbling in both scanned (Nikon V) 35mm and digital capture. (I don't have the equipment to scan MF, though I'd like to) Both are quite new to me - prior experience has been accumulating that big box of slides to scan from. My initial impressions are that I do think my 10mp dslr has more resolution, in the sense of picking up fine details in a scene, than 35mm film. Full stop. But there is something likeably different about film, that I suspect is related to (even when scanned), the more subtle tone curve (?). So they look different to me, but I'm not sure I think one is better.

 

Of the film I've scanned, about half is Kodachrome 64 and about half is 100-speed or 400-speed E-6 film. The Kodachrome has a *lot* of detail in it. the E-6 film, even the 100-speed modern Ektachromes and Fuji films, don't have as much and seem further 'below' the DSLR on that particular count.

I recently had the same goal (cheap go at medium format)... Actually, I'd thought about it about ten years ago, but "cheap" meant something different then than now. Prices have really fallen. I lucked out and got a Yashicamat 124G on the auction site this past summer for a truly ridiculous low price because the seller mistakenly thought it was broken -- I suspected this, but I priced things out and figured I'd do well even if it needed significant repair. In fact, it worked accurately at all apertures and speeds without even a CLA.

 

A TLR is great. It is fairly light and easy to handle but tends to instill a "slow" enough process to really bring out an effective slow and focused method. As for using it on the street, it does attract notice. People ask me about it all the time -- they sometimes think it is a movie camera! But at the same time, the waist-level finder does make it easy to be, well, subtle about exactly *when* you are taking the picture.

 

One thing, though... I use it less than I might, because *scanning* of "for printing" quality with medium format is not easy or cheap, and (for color slides at least) ever thinking again about optical darkroom printing is the last thing I'd want to do (even if I didn't live in a New York apartment without darkroom space). I can't afford a film scanner that does medium format, and am saving up favored frames of E-6 to scan on rental time with an Imacon.

Amateur. Aperture priority most of the time (with liberal use of the exposure compensation settings). Full manual as the easiest solution when I don't want to let the camera re-adjust exposure for a while.

 

I only recently moved to a dslr (which was also my first move to cameras with anything beyond aperture-priority automation). My first reaction to the 'variable' program ability on the D80 (it starts with a program setting but you can still dial in a different aperture, resulting in a kind of 'souped up' aperture priority automation) was to think that it was pretty cool... but I seem to have reverted to aperture priority 90% of the time.

Is this something you do rarely enough that renting is an option?

Man... people here start yelling "K10D" to every question these days! But if the D40 is the "cheap date" template, wouldn't the lower-model Pentaxes (K100 or K110) actually line up better with the poster's request? i.e. closer in price to the D40.

 

If the XTi is on the table, certainly, the K10 also merits a close look, along with the Nikon D80, but those are all steps 'up'...

Hi,

 

I have a Coolscan V that I've recently moved and re-installed on a different

PC/location. After initially concluding that it was broken, and specifically

that something was deeply wrong with the red LED, I've instead been able to

make it work -- some of the time, and with a really weird procedure.

 

At first, when I installed the scanner it would invariably give me the fast-

blink, error signal on the status light, and when starting Nikon Scan there

would be a message regarding the scanner 'reporting a hardware error'. If I

then tried to scan anyway, the image would come out almost (but not quite)

without red - only by turning the red gain all the way up and the green and

blue almost all the way down would I get some vague approximation of balanced

color. Then, I encountered something I hadn't seen in the manual at first

about initially starting the scanner with no film/slide holder in it. I tried

this, and after a try or two the scanner did come online in a way where I still

get the blinking light and the message in Nikon Scan, but the scan actually

happens normally (i.e. colors are as expected).

 

Since then, though, each and every time I turn the scanner on it will work

normally (though after displaying the self-check error message) if I turn the

scanner on without any film or slide holder in it, but will revert to the "no

red" scans if I turn it on while the slide holder (which I've mostly been

using) is in.

 

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Should I believe the scanner and

software "telling me" about a hardware problem? Or does this sound like a kind

of problem that a faulty driver could cause (I did counter-instructionally plug

the scanner in before installing Nikon Scan from the CD, and Windows did its

driver-search bit (from the Nikon disk), -- but I have since removed and

reinstalled Nikon Scan with the scanner detached and unplugged and then re-

plugged the scanner in).

 

Thank you!

 

Andrew

All may not be lost with the D50 for this kind of photographic situation.

 

<pure speculation> Given the explanation offered (the electronic 'gating' rather than a hard shutter at very high speeds) wouldn't the solution be to lower the shutter speed by any means to whatever the D50's "threshold" is (where the shutter starts to work the 'normal' way - is 1/500th a good guess)? Certainly, a narrower aperture, besides having other advantages when shooting into the sun, is one solution -- but if the wider aperture is needed for some other photographic reason wouldn't a lower ISO setting or (if that isn't enough) an ND filter help? </pure speculation>

I should add that, while I've done this mostly with either an incident or reflected handheld meter reading combined with gut adjustment (i.e. the same way I typically use non-metering cameras), many others here have pointed out each time this question is asked that the histogram makes a plain old (educated) guess combined with histogram-informed adjustment a viable method, too, provided you have time to take a follow-up exposure.

AI is fine, too.

 

I have an AI 50mm 1.4 that I have used on the D80 once in a while. *If* you are used to working with older cameras and/or external meters anyway, the lack of the camera's meter isn't a huge deal but more of a minor inconvenience.

You can also use the command wheels in basically the same way.

This was also my very first camera (other than a 110 Instamatic) that my parents bought for me as a kid -- more than 20 years ago. I shot *a log* of rolls of slide film through the high school years with it.

 

I still have that camera and have used it off and on throughout the time I've had it. In fact, a year or so ago I started using it quite regularly -- with a 50mm f1.7 lens it is a very compact, sharp, light great walk-around camera.

 

Purely anecdotal experience, but mine has never broken. It has gotten a bit grimey and has a fair amount of what I guess you'd call brassing (except that on the ME Super it isn't brass). I don't know what is most likely to go when they do. The camera meter is inclined to want to underexpose slighly (1/3 stop, say) but this has always been the case - not related to age.

I'm an amateur who doesn't throw big money at the hobby(i.e. "consumer market") and I also want/need fast primes for my style of photography.

 

I tend to like a short telephoto for much of what I do, so a 50mm is still going to be my default on a 1.5 crop DSLR. A fast prime is good for indoor/window portraits and other pictures without flash -- depth of field control if not ISO still require wide apertures for this. In this sense, the crop does very well by me (I can defer buying a fast 85 for a portrait lens). In the very near future, however, I'll buy either the Sigma 30mm or the 35/f2 Nikkor for something tolerable-fast and closer to the perspective/subject distance of a 50mm on a 35mm camera. I don't know what I'll do (if anything) for true wide-angle (probably settle for one of those cheap slow zooms if I really need to go wide).

 

Actually.... for the knowledgeable 'consumer level' market -- maybe what is needed are modestly fast primes in the 'new standard' format. We got cheap 50mm f2 and 50mm f1.8 lenses for 35mm. Why can't there be semi-cheap 35mm f2 and 35mm f1.8 lenses for DX? Am I wrong that the engineering challenges would be similar? (after all, an 85mm is likely to be the most affordable lens for medium format.)

...and very, very, exotic and expensive... many multiples of a D50...

Hi,

 

I'm trying hard not to re-hash things that have been asked about repeatedly.

 

Here's the situation: I've finally decided it is time for digital to replace

35mm for me (I'll still tinker with medium-format antiquities, though). So, I

have to make a decision both on an initial camera body and on what system I

want to be locked into (I have had some old ('70s-'80s) MF stuff from both

Nikon and Pentax, -- not enough to matter for this but enough to have

vague 'warm-fuzzies' for both companies).

 

So... down to Nikon v. Canon v. Pentax

 

The Digital Rebel just looked and felt bad to me when I held one in a store.

I'm all but sold on the D80. But the Pentax K10D coming down the pike sounds

awfully good (though still vaporware for the moment). Looking at systems,

Canon seems to have the best range of moderate focal-length, fast primes (which

I see as my main interest in lenses). But the Rebel bodies just aren't

aesthetically or ergonomically appealing to me, and the lagging megapixels at

the 20D/30D level do bother me (I know about noise trade-offs, but frankly I

care more about *low* ISO performance and maximum detail than I do about noise

at ISO800). The D80 sounds good and is the current default choice for me (the

D200's AI-lens compatibility would be nice, but the cost is really more than I

ought to or want to spend on a body). Then there is the Pentax, which sounds

likely to be a real category-killer of a body... but what do they offer for

modern lenses and other accessories? The pancakes are 'nifty' but aren't very

fast, and I just don't know a lot about their image quality. And there seem to

be more used Nikon AF or Canon EOS lenses on the market than there are Pentax

MF and AF combined, and the prices aren't worse. And the Pentax means waiting

at least several more months for at least early word on production models, if

not actual published full-blown reviews.

 

Thoughts about these three strong systems/bodies?

It is hard to know whether 1:5.6 is enough to blur both the foreground and background without knowing also the focal length of your lens and the film/sensor size of your camera.

 

It seems possible to me that this just isn't wide enough to get the subject isolation you want, especially if you are using a small-sensor camera with short focal length lens.