anis

Shashank, If you are getting white blotch means you are over exposing. Therefore make sure your camera is set to do spot metering. Then meter the moon and set your shutter speed for the aperture you want. You should be able to get clean, sharp shots with your setup.

-

Anis

Kent is right. TC for such a slow lens is of not much use :( . You are better off buying an used

80-200 f/2.8 ( around 500$ for the push-pull zoom model) first.

Anis

you just need to do a search and the search result will have "Microsoft Cashback" and for ebay items it shows "20 or 25% cashback" depending on the day. But the max refund is 250$ ...

Cheers

Anis

One other tip is to use microsoft's live.com to do a search and you can get cashback from microsoft. I ordered

mine that way (1650 $ with buy it now option) and 250$ cashback for that item.

Cheers

Anis

Thank you all for the information. Regarding the camera, I will be either taking D2x or D70. So it looks like the 300mm/Tc1.4 should be good enough.

I am now considering to change the schedule to be there around the 3rd week of may.

Regards

Anis

Hi all,

I am planning a trip to yellowstone NP around may first or second week and

wondering if anyone have any tips on what to expect. I have 5 days to spend and

I am hoping to cover grand tetons on the way to the park. But it looks like the

south entrance might not be open in the first week of may in which case it will

be yellowstone NP all 5 days.

My questions are

1. Is it worthwhile to get to the park this early or is it better to wait and go

in june

2. What lens are preferred? I am planning to take Nikon 300 f4 afs & 1.4 TC,

nikon 105mm macro, nikon 18-80mm.

3. Any specific must see spots ?

Thank you for information.

Regards

Anis

I agree with the earlier comments, I just sold my D1x infact. It is probably better to get D70 for 350ish as a backup.

The battery is the main problem for me, carrying two cameras and then finding out that D1x's battery is depleted less than half a day is no fun.

You should look up the "photographers tour" offered by most of the tour guide groups. What they do is to let you guys in each of the chamber while it is empty and give few minutes to shoot the light shafts.

You want to take the noon tour for the light shafts.

Here is one I took the last time I went there. It is pretty amazing and is a nice addition to the monument valley photo trail..

http://www.photo.net/photo/5263960

Regards

Anis

Hello,

I used to shoot velvia and then got the D70. Therefore I have experience with what Thomas is asking about. Even though I expect that the quality to differ, D70 "out of the box" pictures are quite dull if you are using Auto white balance.

I recently went on a photo trip with my friend and he had Canon 20D and his picture had highers contrast/color when we reviewed on site.

But, after post processing, I could easily recover the color/contrast information from NEF. As most have already posted, any photo editing that can help modify the histogram will take care of this. Picasa's "I feel lucky" button has very nice preset adjustment which is what I recommended earlier.

Hi,

Before trying a lot of things, I suggest you have her download

picasa (free download from google) and just have her try the "I feel lucky" option. For the most part, it will get you very good results (yes, it works directly on NEF files).

Use the heavy weight Photoshop for more control etc.

Thanks

Anis

Thank you very much for the responses. I have just ordered a D1x from KEH to check it out myself. I will post my observation based on my photo requirements.

Thanks

Anis

<br>

Other than the two filters ( Neutral grad, polarizer, Neutral density) and wide angle, get a fixed focal length lens like 35mm or 50mm. You can build panaroma by taking multiple shots (vertically) and then stitch it. That is a nice technique if you dont have super wide angle lens. <br> <br>

I went through that area on july 4th (but skipped zion) and

here is a <a href="http://www.thezeal.com/blog/?p=92"> travelogue </a> on that. I took 18-70mm, 50mm, 105mm macro and 300mm/1.4TC lenses there. <br> <br>

Anis

I can understand you situation. I had similar issues when I was shooting in antelope canyon and in dunes at death valley, with the D70 and 18-70mm lens. All I can say is, Do NOT change lens in those conditions. My camera did ok in antelope (no lens change), but got lots of dust in death valley.. had to do a lot of work later in PS.

Other than that, you should be ok, since the camera surface dust can be cleaned later.

Cheers

Anis

Hi all,

<br>

This a follow up to the <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?

msg_id=00H3E2&tag=" target="_blank">question</a> about photography around las

vegas area. I would like to thank for all the advice.

<br>

<br>

My friend and I have a written a <a href="http://www.thezeal.com/blog/?p=92"

target="_blank">travelogue</a> on that trip (hopefully it will help other

photographer to plan their trip ).

<br>

<br>

Please checkout some of the pictures in <a

href="http://www.photo.net/photos/Anis/"> my photo.net portfolio </a> (of

course viewing in large mode is better) and my friends photographs are

available <a href=http://picasaweb.google.com/madhankk/Southwest

target="_blank">here</a>.

<br>

<br>

Thanks and Regards

<br>

Anis

Hello,

I completed the trip and here is a travelogue for the trio

http://www.thezeal.com/blog/?p=92

My Photographs are in my portfolio.

Thanks

Anis

The same old tradeoff question again.

D1X Vs D70.

I have a Nikon D70 and needless to say that is a very nice camera. But I find

it lacking in its ability

on subject I like to attempt the following

1. Birds in flight - I tried shooting birds in flight using my 300 F4 AFS lens

(with and without TC 1.4E) and all I

see is the lens struggling to acquire focus making it pretty much impossible.

2. Macro requiring manual focus - Very hard to focus using the viewfinder.

3. grain or pixelation even at ISO 200 - For some reason, I find grain or

pixelation (especially on dark objects at infinity on wide angle shots). I

recently went on a photo trip around the parks in UTAH/ARIZONA/CALIFORNIA

region and

was quite dissappointed with wideangle shots having lot of grain on mountains-

at-infinity. I understand it is either my lens (18-70mm) or the camera, but

the pixelation in darker areas seem to suggest it is the camera as the lens

performs quite well on well lit subjects.

I am toying with the idea of getting a used D1X (about 1100$ with buffer

upgrade) and the posts (some of them pretty old so might not hold true today )

indicate the following:

1. Very good AF with good low light capability

2. Good view finder

3. images from D1X are smoother and have better resolution (10 MP when using

Nikon capture) and richer color.

4. Drinks lot of battery power and heavy

So, atleast on paper, it looks like D1x is the way to go for my requirement. I

would like to hear opinions from

those who have used both the camera.

As always I highly value your opinions.

Thanks

Anis

Thank you all for the helpful tips. We have modified our schedule a bit (but we still have pretty packed itenerary. I will post the images once I am back. The primary objective of this is to hit a lot of the touristy spots during the sunrise/sunset times and drive during the day. We will be setting up seperate trips hopefully this year end to spend more time in those parks.

Regards

Anis

Thank you laurie, we will be willing to change the schedule (we have currently booked motels near each of those locations) to accomodate change based on advice. We figured that most of the good pics are going to be either sunrise or sunset timeframe. so all our travel is planned based on the sunrise/sunset times of those location.

Here is a travalogue of that location by a photographer which we used as a template.

http://www.mit.edu/~cai/photo/SWlog.html

Greetings,

My friend and I are planning a photography trip near the las vegas area this

july 4th weekend.

Here is the locations we are planning to cover over a span of 5 days.

1. Bryce National Park (and cover Yovimpa and Rainbow Point )

2. Arches National Park (will try to cover Moab Fault, The Three Gossips,

Sheep Rock, The Great Wall, Turret Arch, The Spectacles, Double Arch, Cache

Valley, Wolfe Ranch, Double O Arch, Landscape Arch )

3. Monument Valley

4. Antelope canyon (with noon time tour)

5. Death Balley

Equipment:

I will take : Nikon D70, 18-70mm DX, 50mm f/1.4, 300mm f/4 with 1.4 TC and 4

Gig CF with laptop to transfer

My friend will have : Canon 20D, Canon 17-40mm f4 L, Canon 70-200mm f4 L,

Canon 50mm f/1.8, 4 gig CF

Is there any spots/locations we should consider as we picked these from

various guide books etc? Also, is there any special precautions (heat,

critters) we should consider?

We hope to time the travel to be in these places before sunrise and sunset

time frame.

Thanks in advance. Any reply appreciated.

Regards

Anis

Yes. That would be a product recall. Companies need to worry what they need to worry about. If it is a widespread defect then one way or another they will pay the cost. 1000$ might not be a lot of money for them, but it is quite a bit to warrant a concern about getting it fixed.

Anis

I guess a pre-emptive fix by nikon might be really worthwhile as atleast we can schedule the repair...

Anis

Thanks for the info guys! I will download trial version of the software today and try..

Aaron, I really appreciate the effort!

In the milky way shot, the issue was primarily light from different camp sites and I had locked the exposure at f/4.5 and took series of shot at 800 & 1600 ISO with 20 seconds timing and tried to stitch them.

It turned out that the light levels were different for each of the frame and I got those ugly streaks after stiching them.. but still this was my best effort so far at getting milky way on a camera.. :)

I Will apply the de-graining software of the original image and try again and see if that will help in this case. I really like the second image, I was really hoping for the brightest portion of the galaxy ( near the tail of scorpio and Sagittarius ) to stand out.. but the grain/light pollution really messed it up..

Regarding the humming bird pics, I just wanted a crisp image of the bird (was not attempting to freeze the wings though).. and 300 f/4 AFS is the max I can afford so waiting for another opportunity to photograph the little guys in better lighting condition..

Regards

Anis

Hi Ilkka,

I used Nikon 300mm f4 AFS for this.. I did realize that I was not going to stop the wings as I Was looking for about 1/250 or possibly higher just to freeze the bird... flash was not an option as this was during a camping trip and I just had this lens and my 105mm macro..

Let me get the neat image app and see if it can handle the milky way shot..

Thanks

Anis