jim_gifford

The flash is reflecting off dust particles close to the camera.

Otherwise, the photo is up to snuff.

Be well.

I just use the cork pad that cam with the Press-T. I know it's an 18th Century technology for a 21st Century camera... but it works.

I used a Stroboframe anti-twist plate when I mounted the bracket on my N90s. Had to snip a section of the back flange on the anti-twist bracket away, to let the film door open. That was either bad design on Stroboframe's part or bad quality control on my part when ordering the anti-twist plate (there are a LOT of them including two that can fit the Nikon N90s depending upon whether the vertical grip is attached... so maybe it was my boo-boo. Anyway, a one-minute fix with tin snips.)

The cork seems to work as well on the D200 as the anti-twist plate did on the N90s.

I do not use an anti-twist plate for my SC-29 cord... because when I got the bracket there WAS no anti-twist plate for that cord yet, so I ordered the next best thing, which was an anti-twist plate for the predecessor SC-17 cord. Alas, not interchangeable. It did not fit the newer cord. As luck would have it, I found someone on photo.net who had the SC-17 and wanted an anti-twist plate, so I mailed mine to him rather than just throw it away.

I think maybe we ought to consider lower-tech solutions when all we really need is a high coefficient of friction. With all due respect to the folks at Really Right Stuff -- whose bespoke brackets I would probably buy if I were connecting and unconnecting cameras and flashes and tripods all day every day -- not everything needs to be milled from billet.

Have at least one nice meal at Bullwinkle's. You could get by easily with just the the 12-24, 50 and 80-400. It could be snowy and cold, or clear and just chilly. When you are in town... you can walk from anything in West Yellowstone to anything else in West Yellowstone. It's not a big place.

I do not know enough about the tour operators to recommend (or recommend against) any, sorry. My family was there in early August last year, and we had a rental vehicle in which to manage our own transportation.

The Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman is much, much, MUCH better than you might expect for a museum in a town of maybe thirty-mumble thousand people. The university provides good volunteer horsepower for it. Anthropology, archaeology, geology, paleontology, astronomy. If your flight schedule gives you any time in Bozeman, consider using it to check the museum out.

You can go see the Tetons if you like, assuming the roads are clear, and get back to West Yellowstone at the end of a long day trip.

If you're an eastern sort of southerner, you might be surprised by the scale of things in Montana and Wyoming. If the southWEST is your home, you're already used to the concept of fifty miles of lovely but essentially empty land in all directions.

Have a wonderful adventure.

...yes, but when you DO get to the Waterton Lakes area, and check in at the Prince of Wales hotel for a night or three, and then see the view of the lake and mountains from the lawn at the rear of the hotel.... wow.

Lots of nice short hikes with good scenery in Waterton Lakes. Wonderful people in Waterton Lakes.

The whole Montana experience from west to east and back on Going to the Sun road is great. Kalispell (west side) is a neat town. Browning (east side) is not exactly photogenic, but I love it anyway. Something about the intersection of all those mountains with all that grassland... there's a lot to like.

Be well,

Jonathan, your 35-80 will be spectacular for landscapes. Set it at f/8 and lock everything tightly on your tripod and prepare to be impressed.

I must echo the other advice you just got. You're spending too large a portion of your budget for the camera body if you're stopping short of the $300 to get an 18-70 DX lens.

Be well,

Jeffrey, the numbers refer to the focal length at each end of the zoom range.

The OTHER numbers refer to the largest aperture opening inside the lens when it is set at the wide end of the zoom, and the largest aperture opening at the other end of the zoom range. Many zoom lenses have this sort of variable aperture.

Try to get a book from the library on photography basics, so you can learn about focus, shutter speed, lens aperture, depth of field and other fundamentals that will help you understand WHY your digital pictures work the way they do. Two terrific aspects of digital photography are the almost instantaneous feedback for the photographer, and the nearly nil cost per image while learning the ropes.

Be well,

Duncan -- good detective work.

Be well,

Oh, dear. You seem to have discovered BGLOD-B: blinking green light of dead battery.

Good luck.

Be well,

The Nikkor 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 AF-D would handle everything except the very wide end of your desired focal length range and is a much-beloved autofocus lens that does not cost a lot of money.

You already have a 24-70 lens you think is OK and a 70-300 that you like. What do you REALLY want from an additional lens?

You might love an autofocus 50/1.8 or an 85/1.8 for sharp images with deliberately narrow depth of field... or for shooting without flash in mediocre lighting conditions.

Or perhaps what you need next is not a lens but some other addition to your kit that will expand your photographic horizons. Accessory flash? Tripod? Lots of new film? A weekend trip to a photogenic spot?

This thinking out loud, since you don't post a compelling reason to change glass. New lenses are always great fun, but... not always the right expense.

Be well,

You have two cameras and prefer to rely on one of them. Okay, take that one to Afghanistan. Leave the other one home.

Be well,

Brenda, your goal is wedding photography, so you will want to have a minimum of TWO camera bodies, TWO lenses and TWO options for flash.

You ask about Nikon and want cameras in the $500 to $80 range, which for today means D50 or D70s bodies.

For lenses, you certainly could use an 18-70 DX lens, but I think you also will want something with a fast aperture. The 50mm f/1.8 AF-D lens works beautifully on Nikon digital bodies and costs only $100 or so. The 35mm F/2 AF-D lens costs a little more, and of course has a wider field of view than the 50. There are plenty of other lenses in the Nikon catalog for you to consider as you get a better idea of what would complement your own shooting style for weddings.

For flash, your choices are the SB800 and SB600 speedlights for now. The SB800 makes more sense for wedding work, because it is a bit more powerful and it is more flexible in wireless iTTL mode. You may need substantial depth of field for group formals, and that means stopping down the lens, and THAT eats into your working distance with a flash, so the extra power of the SB800 might be a lifesaver.

Flash on the hot shoe can only do so much to protect you from ugly shadows and from redeye at normal working distances. You can get a bracket, to put the flash higher above the lens axis, to improve both shadow placement and redeye resistance.

Get lots of "film," by which I mean many gigabytes of flash card memory. You will want spare batteries.

I would think a tripod with either a ball head or a three-way pan head would be very helpful for formals.

The moral of the story is: You need more than a just a camera to accomplish your goal. The minimal equipment includes lighting and camera support and lens selections and backups for any bit of gear more complicated than a piece of lumber. Your $500 to $800 budget will not suffice for digital wedding photography essentials, but you can get a pretty decent set of new Nikon DSLR gear, plus backups, for about $3,000 to $4,000 nowadays. You don't need all the gear tomorrow... but you should have all the gear before you get paid to be the sole photographer for someone's once-in-a-lifetime day.

Then there is the most important bit of equipment: your brain. It is good that you have an experienced photographer from whom to learn the ropes of pro photography.

Be well,

<<We plan on having kids in 3-5 years, but I wouldn't mind getting started now if the technology isn't going to leap forward in that amount of time.>>

The technology will leap forward in tha amount of time, sorry.

Buy today for today's photography needs, and do not be surprised or disappointed if you wind up wanting to buy something newer by the time you have those kids.

It is very unlikely that you would NEED to buy something newer. I doubt that anything you buy today would be flat out incapable of taking pictures for you because of some technology change in the interim. What you buy today probably will work just as well in five years as it does today.

However, the equipment available new in five years probably will offer features and photographic quality that are more alluring... for what will seem like a reasonable price.

As a culture, we have adjusted to that model for computers, cellular phones and other personal electronics. It is how the camara business is evolving.

Be well,

<<Am leery of buying the D80 with 18-135 without hands on lens reviews>>

Good thinking. So.... wait. The reviews of the lens should be available within a few weeks. Then we'll know whether the 18-135 lens is terrific, okay or blah.

Any reason you NEED to put your name on a D80 list today?

If not, be patient, trust your instinct, wait for info before committing money.

Be well,

If you will visit www.metz.de and check the SCA adapter list you'll work through a menu that leads to an archive listing for "older" flash units like the Mecablitz 45 CT-4... and that listing will answer your question.

Working from memory I believe it may be the 3402 model adapter... but the web site I pointed to will give you the answer unambiguously.

Be well,

They'll all work just fine. Each lens will have a narrower field of view (by a factor of 1.5) on the D2x than on your film cameras.

Be well,

We were at Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks last year in the first part of August. Wildflowers aplenty in the meadows at Glacier.

But the thing is, for wildflowers, every year is different, isn't it? That's the adventure.

Other neat things near Glacier: (1) The whole area on the west side from Kalispell to Wallace, Idaho. (2) The way Browning sits on the grassland with the Rockies filling the horizon and the wind from the Rockies rustling your clothes. Browning is a magical spot. It's not a photogenic town, and it's not the home of fabulous cuisine or night life. It's just geologically magical. You know how some places tend to give you the creeps and other places veel very right? Browning feels very right. The Blackfeet cultural angle is important, too. (3) Waterton Lakes, which forms an international "peace park" on the Canadian side of the border from Glacier National Park. Breathtaking.

Check the conditions at the eastern entrance... big fire there recently. Might be better, all things considered, to visit Glacier from the west side this summer. There's also at least some prayer of finding a place to sleep on the Kalispell side... not much lodging on the east side and for early August visits it tends to book up by February anyway.

Be well,

I see three possibilities, two of which are okay and the third of which is prety keen.

First, it may be the existing AF-D ED lens modified to add VR and to subtract the aperture ring. If so, it will be an overall improvement, because VR is a GOOD thing in a 300mm lens that is so lightweight people tend to use it handheld.

Second, perhaps it will be a VR version of the existing bargain basement G lens. Still better than no VR, but not much to cheer about in terms of glass.

I wonder, though, about the third possibility. Perhaps Nikon will give us a VR 70-300 lens that is better, optically, than either of the recent modestly pried zooms. Perhaps the new lens will be more like Canon's f/4 L-series glass. People like the f/4 Canon lenses a lot: excellent clarity and contrast, and easier to carry all day than the f/2.8 zooms.

I'd be happy to see such a product in the Nikon lineup. Would you?

We'll know more in a week.

Be well,

Bart, you may be expecting too much when you say a camera should work for years after a $100 service. Other problems can arise at any time, rendering a camera unusable.

But for the EM and its shutter problem, you might take the body back to the shop and show them that the problem persists. Ask if they would give you either a better repair attempt at no charge, or a refund of the service fee since the service did not fix the problem.

The thing is, not many places warranty repairs for six months. Three months (or even just 30 days) is more typical. They could say "no."

My son still has the EM I bough in about 1982. I do understand why some people do not think much of the EM. You get only aperture priority autoexposure (plus a one-note-samba manual shutter speed), and only center-weighted metering. It is not built as robustly as other early 1980s Nikons.

However, center-weighted metering is effective, and my favorite exposure mode is aperture priority. So, for me, the EM is an ideal Nikon. It does just what I want, and it is not cluttered with options I do not use.

I am sorry yours has a shutter problem that may transform it into a "parts" camera. But as you already know, there are others out there (www.keh.com being a fine place to hunt) for under $100 nowadays.

Be well,

<<How is this possible? I feel like I must be over looking the catch- what am I missing?!>>

You are overlooking, or missing, the fact that such places are notorious scam artists. They will not make you happy. Run -- do not walk -- run from such businesses!

Do not take my word for it. See www.resellerratings.com for more info.

Be well,

Walter, yes, zoom creep is the nature of the beast with the Series E 75-150.

I just live with mine... but if you wish to fix it, I have run across what seems to be a fairly elegant solution in various forum posts. Take a straight length of plain, unused Dymo brand self-adhesive label tape and apply it to the lens barrel longitudinally, which is to say running from near the aperture ring end directly toward the filter ring end. This will increase the effective diameter of the barrel, impinging on the underside of the zoom ring just enough to increase friction and stop the creep. Meanwhile, it looks nice and has a smooth nonporous surface so it doesn't attract crud or scuff or scar anything.

The suggestions for applying a layer or three of electrical tape or other thinner types of tape should also function well, if not perhaps look as "finished."

Be well,

Re: having a hard time getting ahold of an HS-11.

E-bay shows one for auction today, plus one that comes with a supposedly mint 50mm f/1.8 lens... and two other sellers with "buy it now" prices, one of whom is asking about $30 for the HS-11 hood and another of whom wants a whopping $60.

Whoooo-EEE!

For that kind of money I can hire a beautiful woman to stand next to me and shade the lens with a hat.

Heck, most 50/1.8 Nikkors have a deeply recessed front element so the hood rarely gets to contribute to the flare protection anyway.

Be well,

David, the manual focus Nikkor 50-135 and Nikon Series E 75-150 are both well regarded. I have the latter, and it's terrific.

The wider zooms? Hmmm. I don't know. The rest of my manual focus lenses are fixed focal length. But I do wonder about your interest in shooting wide-angle lenses with wide open apertures. They tend to deliver oodles of depth of field anyway, so many folks stop down for the whole near-far everything in focus effect at middle apertures like f/8 and f/11. What do you like to shoot with wide-open wide-angle glass? If you get close enough with a 24mm lens to take a portrait and throw the background into creamy out of focus blur... haven't you given your subject The Nose of The Century? Just curious.

The exposure meter on your D70 will decline to work with manual focus lenses such as the ones you mention. You can still use them on the camera, but in manual mode where you set the shutter speed and aperture and guesstimate the exposure, using the histogram or LCD to assess your result.

I believe your F70QD will give you center-weighted and spot metering with such lenses, and will of course give you a wider field of view than will the D70 for any given focal length. The F70 is a lovely camera albeit one with a unique user interface. I have an N90s, one of its contemporaries.

Be well,

We can expect the price of the D200 to drop between now and its eventual replacement. I would not expect the August 9 announcement of the D80 to nudge Nikon to lower the price for the D200. In fact, keeping the price of the D200 at $1699.00 will minimize the extent to which the D200 and D80 compete with each other.

So far, the D200 seems to be selling briskly. Until a couple of weeks ago, many major photo equipment supply stores found it very had to keep D200 bodies in stock (kits with 18-70 or 18-200 lenses were more readily available). Given that level of demand, a reduction in price would be premature.

When supply really catches up with demand, the D200 might get a bit less expensive. Perhaps it will be a $1599 or $1499 camera at the December holidays. In a couple of years, it could well be a $999 camera, while people start cranking out rumors of its replacement.

There are no direct competitors to the D200 today, although there are many other fine DSLR models with even more attractive feature sets that cost more, and plenty of fine DSLRs selling for less and offering less in terms of capabilities. Some of those, no doubt, are bought by folks who also considered a D200, so in that sense they compete for buyers.

If a more direct competitior shows up alongside the D200, that will be the real impetus to adjust the D200 price. In the short term, its price is likely to shrink only very slowly.

If you buy now, you are unlikely to see prices hundreds of dollars lower at Thanksgiving and kick yourself. Meanwhile, you'll have the camera you want, in hand.

Be well,

The standard answer for you is a rubber hood that collapses into a tidy donut shape around the rim of the lens.

I prefer metal spin-on hoods to rubber hoods or clip-on hoods.

On my 50/1.8 lenses (manual or AF) I use the metal hood that is meant for 35mm lenses. I gain a sturdy bumper to take minor knocks on behalf of the lens, with a nice solid feel, that will not be detached if the camera or I get nudged in a crowd. I lose some angular protection against flare, though, because the hood is built to allow a wider angle of view than the 50 really needs.

Do what works for YOU, and as long as it doesn't vignette, who is to know or care whether the hood you use is "the" hood in the Nikon catalog for that particular lens?

Steve, if you usually make big prints of shots you love, then bring one of the cameras that gives you big negatives -- the 4x5 or the Pentax 67 -- and take time to enjoy using it once in a while on your trip.

If you don't want big prints for the walls, then having just the 35mm and little digital cameras is no disadvantage.

I took the Rolleiflex and 35mm Nikon to Waterton Lakes, Glacier and Yellowstone last summer, and did not regret taking a little more time to use the Rolleiflex on the more extravagantly scenic bits (the Nikon served double duty as ambient light meter). Still, I haven't made any big prints from that trip. If I were going back this year, I would bring only my new Nikon D200.

I do think you will want at least one relatively long-lens option (300mm or better in 35mm field of view terms) for some wildlife opportunities. You don't need a big lens to photograph elk and bison in Yellowstone; they're often quite near the roads in large numbers, grazing or just relaxing in hilly, photogenic surroundings. And you get quite close to the thermal features in Yellowstone. But for bear or bighorns or goats or raptors -- critters that either keep their distance from you, or that you really want to keep your distance from! -- have a tele option.

As for "ruin the recreational parts of my vacation," only you can decide, really. But one easy solution is to consider photography one of the recreational parts of your vacation...

Be well,