hans_eckelman

Um.... Costco will do a 12X18 print for $3. Might want to check into that.

I was in the same situation trying to decide on an indoor sports photography lens. I bit the bullet and bought the 70-200 2.8L IS. I've only had it for a couple weeks, but MAN what a difference from my trusty 75-300 IS lens. Focusing is faster, the lens is faster, the lens is MUCH sharper and it is much easier focusing by hand because the image is brighter. I wholeheartedly recommend the Canon 70-200L lens.

If you want a good, inexpensive way to get real prints, I suggest Costco. The Costco by me has 4x6 prints for .19, 8x12 for 2.00 and 12x18 for 3.00. The prints from the 10D are, IMHO, amazing. You don't have to worry about inks fading or changing since what you get back is just like a photo taken with film. When you add all the costs, you just can't beat Costco. I understand Sam's Club has the same or close to it pricing.

Small noise factor? If I hold my ear right up to the drive and if it is really quiet around me then I can hear it spin. Inside the camera I can't hear it at all.

I seem to recall seeing Quantum having an adapter for the 1D for their QB5/5+, Turbo C and Turbo 2X2 lines of external batteries. I use the Quantum Turbo for my flash and have yet to make it past a quarter of the power used even after about 700 pictures, so there is a lot of juice in those. On the Turbo 2X2 you can even hook your camera and flash to the battery at the same time. Might be a better solution than walking around with a car battery strapped to your back...

3....2....1.... OK sell it. I sold my A2E shortly after buying my D60 and haven't regretted it. I haven't even thought about going back to film since I got a digital SLR because to me it is the same without the expense of film and without the waiting to see if the pictures came out correctly.

 

One piece of advice... if you haven't done so already, go buy a copy of Photoshop.

I've always gotten great results from Costco. The one in my area charges .19 for a 4x6, .69 for a 5x7, 1.99 for an 8x12 and 2.99 for a 12x18. All that and I also usually get my pictures back in an hour.

I've been using my 28-135 IS for a couple years now on a couple different bodies and have not noticed anything above and beyond the normal "whirring" sound of the IS, and that sound is barely audible. Since it is under warranty, I would send it in since I doubt the problem will fix itself.

There is no set answers at a given ISO because it depends on the aperature setting your camera is on. According to Canon, the flash can go out to 100 feet using ISO 100 and a 50mm F1.4 lens. As the aperature gets smaller (higher F number), less light can come in and the flash has to work harder and the maximum distance will go down. As the ISO goes up, less light is required and the maximum distance will go up.

I am not sure you should take anything serious from some guy who all but admits he is a PITA in his signature line.

 

First, do you have a flash bracket? That will help minimize the shadows to the side when taking portrait pictures.

 

Second, I would recommend putting the camera on manual at the speed and aperature you want to use. The camera and flash should work together to get you the exposure you want. I find this is much more reliable than any of the program modes. Just remember that if you go for too high a speed / aperature setting that the background will probably be too dark.

 

Third, bring LOTS of batteries! Unfortunately the 420 doesn't have a battery connector on it for using external batteries. The batteries last a while, but you might find the wait times for the flash to recharge to be unacceptable as the batteries get weaker. Using an omnibounce doesn't help either since the flash will have to work harder for each shot.

 

Hope this helps and have fun at the party!

Jason, I've tried to detect the preflash on my 550EX and I can't see it either. I have some strobes that can, however. I tried triggering them with my flash but without the flash set to manual. You get very dark pictures that way because the studio flashes would have already fired before the curtain opened, PLUS the light from the studio lights tell the camera that there is a LOT more light out there than there really is.

Sure. Record all the steps you normally go through into an action in photoshop. Then use the automation tool to process all files using that action.

The reason you want to put it on setting 2 when panning is so the lens does not try to "catch up" to the panning action. It sees the pan as vibration and tries to compensate, so instead of a smooth motion you get a jerky motion. By putting it on setting 2, the lens compensates for vibrations up and down, but senses the horizontal pan and disables the horizontal vibration correction so you get a smooth pan.

It was because of posts like this that I went out this weekend and picked up a 50 1.8 mk II lens. Haven't had a chance to really try it out, but it sounds like it takes good pictures and works well in low light.

I've done several weddings with the 10D with great results. I've printed pictures to 12 X 18 that looked awesome to both me and the happy couple. The only gotcha I've come across is that the picture has to be perfectly focused or the enlargement will really suffer.

I use to have the Canon A2E before I went digital. I loved it!

I haven't used it on the BP300 specifically, but it is adjustable to compensate for a battery pack or vertical grip. It works on my 10D with the vertical grip in place with adjustment to spare, so I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Someone on this site recommended the VH 2000 flash bracket by Stroboframe to me.

 

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh4/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=52784&is=REG

 

I've been very happy with it. It is a lot smaller than the other flash brackets and allows you to grip the camera instead of the bracket. It works well with the 10D and doesn't block the battery compartment unless you are using the verticle grip.

Seems like a pretty decent camera. I thought it was interesting that the camera has an ISO range of 200 - 1600. Does Nikon have something against 100?

 

This looks like more of a camera that is designed to compete against the 1D than the 10D or especially the 1Ds. Any news on pricing?

I have both the 75-300 IS and 28-135 IS lenses with my 10D and have had no problems at all even with continuous shots in AI Servo. I've been doing a lot of baseball pictures with the 75-300 and have had zero problems.

OK, I realize I am going against the grain here, but I've had better luck with the microdrives than I have with solid state cards. I've tried several brands and speeds of CF cards and they've all pretty much worked the same. The trouble is I've had three CF cards go bad on me and I've also experienced some issues with the CF cards that I have yet to experience with the Microdrive.

 

I've used only name brand CF cards and have noticed that my shooting gets interrupted once in a while when the camera is writing to the card. At first I thought this was just a fluke and that I just never noticed the delay when using the microdrive. After some further testing I discovered that it wasn't a fluke and that the camera would have to pause once in a while to finish writing on a CF card, but never with a microdrive.

 

I have since gotten rid of all my CF cards except one 512mb card as a backup. Otherwise I have three 1GB microdrives that have never given me a lick of trouble.

Picture rotation is not a custom function, but is an option off the main menu.

A 10x15 print from a 10D done on a Fuji Frontier printer produces no visible pixilation even when viewed with a loupe. A 10x15 print is done at 200DPI if no cropping or resizing was done on the original photo. At 20X30 pixelation is visible upon close examination of the print, but at normal viewing distances looks very nice.

DB, most photo printers will print whatever jpg file you give them. The printer will adjust resolution to make the picture fit if it is not what the printer needs. One recommendation I would make is that you make sure the picture is cropped correctly for the size print you want. If you want 4x6 you don't have to do anything. If you want 8x10, crop it yourself unless you want just the middle part of the picture.

 

The trick I always use to make sure I get the prints the size I want is to put the jpg files in a directory that is named how I want the print. So if I want double 4x6 matte prints I make a directory called 4x6 matte 2 prints each and then dump the jpgs inside. I've printed extremely complex orders this way with Costco and they've never messed up when I've done it this way. I really don't want to talk about what happened before this. It is still rather painful for me to discuss.

Could you make due with a D30? Sure. Would a D60 or 10D be better? Absolutely. You would have more creative freedom with your prints because you could crop them much more than you could the three megapixel image from the D30. If you can afford it, I recommend the 10D. The autofocus and numerous other improvements made it worth the money to upgrade for me.