suman

As the title says, I am going Niagara this weekend for my first visit to this

waterbody. I heard mist is a big problem. I am thinking of carrying 20D, 10-22

zoom for wide angle and 70-300 for any telephoto shot. Will also take my 50mm

f1.8 and tripod for night shots. Is that good enough? If it is, any more

precaution I must take before the start of our journey?

Thanks for sharing your experience, in advance.

I am not getting the same error. But now, none of the photos are opening up in CS2. Yes, these photos were backed up into a hard drive, my computer crashed and I restored the photos from backup.

I am kinda out of luck I think. I backed up my photos in an external

drive. Computer crashed and now none of the jpegs are opening up in

PSCS2. Getting an error that arthmatically encoded JPEGs are not

supported. Can anyone help me out here? 20D raw files are not even

opening up in PSCS2. However, new files are doing just fine. Anyway

to salvage my photos?

Thats normal Sanjay, It is some weired implementation of autofocus assist light in 20D.

Neil,

never ever buy a package unless you are travelling. utwardly it looks roesey but as you grow up, you will curse yourself for buying cheapie Sigma's. Invest on better glass from the start. If you are living in US, buy rebelXT from Dell or whenever Canon comes up with tripple rebates. That goes for ~750 dollars. The camera comes with a rather good lens although it is part of a kit. Spend that 100-150 leftover dollars on a 50mm f1.8 prime. If you have stronger urge for a telephoto, use the leftover $$ and wait to buy a 70-200 f4L or 70-300 IS USM.

The lens diameter will probably be enormous, but more disturbing will be the weight. f2.8 zooms are already monsters in terms of weight, so you gotta add up to that. Quality wise teh f2.8 zooms are almost all L quality, I think with a one or two exception in 28-70/80 range older zooms.

Keep the 20D. I was handling teh D50 yesterday at Circuitcity and the AF speed was pretty disappointing. Rebel XT in comparison, is much faster. However as you already know, XT is a crippled body and teh build quality is not as good as 20D. In my opinion, the kit lens is pretty good. look at Bob Atkins review on that very lens. Also, you can always add a 50mm f1.8 for the special shots at a rock bottom price.

LOL! I am just wondering how I missed the pentax forum. However, I do get what I am looking for, advice. Thank you all. I will probably keep an eye on Vivitar 555mm lens aka Pangor. I used the Vivitar 100mmm Macro in EOS mount but I always felt nervous of breaking it apart. I don't about the built quality of older 105mm macro lens. Will do my research on that particular lens.

PN sometime sucks, there is no dedicated forum for Pentax gear. I was

searching for one in K mount in ebay and there was a lot of prime

macro lens. Incidentally I know almost nothing about K-mount lense

since I have used Canon AF gear ever since I started photography. Two

old K-mount SLR actually pushing me back to look into the old days. So

the question is what brand of lenses I must look at (I am on a budget,

my two cameras cost me 60 bucks in total)? Also, I am wondering if

DeJur is good lens manufacturer?

Though the pro EOS bodies are rather affordable to budget oriented photgs, they are still much more expensive than other prosumer options like Elan7. Film cameras, unlike their digital brothers, just a camera. All that matters, is the photographer and the lens and the film. You can probably go to my route. I have a 20D but bought an old Vivitar plasticky SLR for my bro. However I fall in love with that 20 year old manual focus SLR that accepts all sort of K mount lense. You can see the result in my B&W folder. Believe me, my camera cost me 30 bucks! Now decide for yourself.

Here comes our monthly poll!

Why bother with WB? shoot in RAW and check.

Pretty good offer. Go for it.

http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/lenses_all_details.asp?id=3316&navigator=3

If you purchased it new, don't bother cleaning it yourself. Get a new one from the dealer. I don't know why a speak of dust get to the sensor of a new camera in the first place, unless you did something evil to it.

But! none of the 3rd party lens are as close to Canon in terms of pricing. And we yet to see the complains of xyz Sigma lens is not working with 30D. I think it is very common practise to sell OEM product at a premium. Look at the HP ink cartridge price and compare them to third party offerings.

He was not looking happy coz the lens was not white.

Contarary to Rob's comment, I found that lens is pretty good. Check out my naturescapes folder for the mountain lion and a pelican. Both were surprisingly sharpe. IMO, 80-200 lens you are talking about is a surprisingly good lens. Light and small but built wise pretty avarage. Mine was dropped once and manual focussing refused to work. Finally I sold it off.

Just a MAY BE! You did not sync the time of your computer to 20D and you have wrong date setup in your computer! Just may be, as I said before, can cause this problem. Although we don't buy a camera for the sake of using it as a timepiece, it is stupid enough to brag about that.

Folks, I just tried to make the post simple stupid. Anway, all shots were from 20D (cable release, locked mirror)seated on a stable tripod, shot in RAW and converted by rar shooter essentials. All are center crop and there is no PS work involved other than sharpenning. Surprisingly, 70-300 is as good as 70-200! and that's why I think I made a right decision.

It was teh question that pops out more than once every week. So I made

a comparison test shots for the three competitors, namely new 70-300mm

IS, 70-200 f4 L and 300mm f4 L. The result speaks for itself at

http://sumans.dyndns.org .

At some point I do this comparison game with my friend's 300D. I was a 5 month's D60 user before moving on to something else. To me, 300D was quite amazing as a camera. The grip feels better in hand. The camera is quite fast, in terms of startup time and autofocus. With hacked firmwares it is almost a 10D without the magnesium shell. D60 has a pretty spotty high ISO performance, 300D comparatively much better in that field.

Very impressive shot Gimapi. My 20D is no where close to that at ISO1600. Actually I see hard grains even at ISO800.

Don't worry. There are hundreds of photogs in NYC who use their 20D at minus 5-10 degree C over this time. Your XT will be just fine. Just take extra care to warm up your gear slowly, else you will notice condensation.

Man, that crack looks pretty ugly. Looks liek the barrel was made of cheap plastic. Is that waht "built" quality of a L lens speaks for?