ed weinstein

<p>I played with this on my D7000 for five minutes with a sinking feeling. Then I realize that I still had the shutter release set to remote.<br>

There's still a palm print on my forehead.</p>

I think it is better to buy a smaller kit and get better stuff. You can get a beginner monolight kit for about the same price. B&H sells a number of monolight/umbrella/stand kits for $180-$200 per head (not listed as "kits"). Adorama has other options. Most are 160 watt units. I got 320 watt (SP-System Excalibur) units for $40/head more, but rarely use them at full power. These kits don't have the barn doors, soft boxes, or backdrops and some don't have bags (I use an old duffel bag). I bought backdrops on ebay for about $30. Also, until you get a bit of experience, I don't think that you'll notice the difference between umbrellas and softboxes and can get by without the barn doors. The barn doors are not expensive and you can add them if you decide that you want them later. Ditto the softboxes, though they're a bit more. I've used this kit quite a bit and got acceptable to good results. Any deficiencies were clearly with the photographer rather than the equipment.

 

Build quality is also an issue. While equipment is less important than skill of the photographer and a good one could get great results from the kit that you mention, even the best can't get good results from broken equipment.

 

If you decide to go this route, I would rule out heads where the user can't replace the flash tube. It's important if you photograph groups of kids (as I found out). If you can, look at the units to try to assess build quality.

one other perspective. "environmental" portraits (those where the subject and some characteristic surroundings are portrayed) are often well served by a 50mm. it allows the photographer to be back far enough to avoid distortion but be close enough to have good interaction with the subject and get a sense of depth in the photograph.

paparazzi are part of the celebrity phenomena. it goes wtih the territory. these stars that make $20,000,000 for a film and then cry about being pestered must think that they are actually worth that much to society. they are worth that much because their star status can propell a mediocre movie to success. take notting hill, for instance, if the movie was made with two far better looking actors who could actually act, it would have been a flop. but people came to see it because of the celebrities. they are celebrities, in part, because of hte paparazzi. julia roberts never complained about the paparazzi before she made it big.

 

i do believe, however, people willing to pay for the paparazzi pictures should be banned.

 

ed

i am thinking of buying a koni-omega. i have been looking around the

web and cannot find a description of the difference between the

models. is there a difference in capabilities? reliability? is there

a reason to buy a more recent model? medfmt.8k.com seems to be down

at the moment.

 

any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

thanks

 

ed

there are two reasons to shoot wide open. one is to shoot in low light. it is always surprizing to me just how slow most consumer zooms are and how often users require a flash. the other is to limit depth of field. as you get more facile with the photographic equipment, you will likely want to experiment with this. i agree with the previous poster about primes. i also cannot afford pro zooms and have only primes. i don't find it limiting at all.

there is a review of the new tokina in this month's pop photo. it did pretty well. certainly a very good value.

there is another possiblility. i bought an n80 for my wife. her first roll had a lot of blurry pictures and she thought that it wsa not focusing properly. the truth, however, was that she was not always using the flash when she should. so the camera was using a slow shutter speed and the blurriness was from camera movement. even with the flash up, the default shutter speed is 1/90 (why it is not 1/125, the max sync speed, is a mystery) which is marginal when zoomed in to 80mm. if the problem persists and it was not simply that hte camera was set to manual focus, watch your shutter speed. you can also look to see whether the blurry ones were taken indoors without the flash (you will see a yellow or green cast from incandescent or flourescent lights).

 

hope this helps.

there are a host of similar cameras. you could probably still find a new nikon fm2, certainly used ones are common. as far as i remember the k1000 from my first photography class in junior high 25 years ago, the fm2 is very similar. they cost a bit more than others, but there is a reason - build quality. pentax made a pro quality manual focus camera, but i cannot remember the name. others include cannon ae1, olympus om1, minolaty srt100 series, 200 series, etc. slightly more updated is the nikon fm3, the minolta x700, and many others. if your wife does not have a lot of lenses, you might want to move to slightly higher build quality with the nikon.

 

good luck

i would definately check out the minolta maxuum 5. it has the fastest autofocus, the best autofocus for low light, wireless off camera ttl flash capability, and the best kit lens in the class. it is also at the cheap end, $300 or less with the lens. with the price difference, you can get a maxxuum flash that will take advantage of teh wireless ttl capability. for $450 you will get the absolute greatest capability available.

 

the n80 is a very nice camera, fantastic view finder, much more convenient if you want to do anything manually. i must say that for indoor shooting, i would reach for the minolta though.

 

ed weinstein