panos_voudouris

<p>With regards to the flickr set you've been looking at, the guy is using a 80mm lens with a 16E and/or 32E tube. You can see that on the list of tags of each photo.</p>

<p>I have a 21mm tube which with my 80 can get me pretty close. Tubes are generally not very easy for handling, you might have to add/remove the tube and move the camera back/forth to get the magnification you need but they are a very cheap way to get close.</p>

<p>Just be careful with you tubes, you want to put them on and off in the right order otherwise you jam the camera (tube on camera then lens on tube, to take off lens off tube then tube off camera).</p>

<p>Hi Emily,<br /><br />If I had ONE thing in the world to shoot, which was dark places with no tripods, then digital is what I'd use. Your DSLR will shoot ISO 1600 easily. You can even shoot 3200 with not much loss of quality, given the subject matter. Just run it through Lightroom or Noise Ninja or something and the colour noise disappears very nicely.<br /><br />You can buy a Leica or a F90X or a TLR or whatever, but the simple fact is that the best a film camera can do is what the film you put in it can do. 35mm film above 800 is grainy. The colours get a bit washed out. The detail get a bit muddy in the grain. You can fiddle the print and the exposure to get something better out of it but there is only that much you can do. I honestly don't know why your tutor suggested film for the one thing digital clearly does better...?<br /><br />You can try a MF camera with 800 film. This will be much better, compared to 35mm but if you buy a cheap MF TLR or MF SLR, you have other issues. For £300 you can get a cheap TLR or MF SLR (<strong>other please note, the used market in the UK is nothing like the US. £300 buys you not that much</strong>). But the cheap ones have dark viewfinders/waist-level finders. And I mean dark. You won't be able to see a thing in a warehouse. Plus a waist-level-finder in a club will be lit up like a Xmas tree from the reflections. And you will have no way of doing some trickier shots, like holding the 400D high up and randomly shooting. Not just that, but MF cameras in the £300 range are limited at best to f/2.8 lenses. So 800 film and f/2.8 lenses is not good at all for handheld shots in a dark warehouse.<br /><br />I assume you have the 400D and 18-55 kit lens (looking at your flickr photos). I'd just add a Sigma 10-20 or something like that. You should be able to find one of them for less than £300 on ebay. Or if you don't want something as wide get a Sigma 20/24/28 (the f/1.8 ones). Or you might as well just use what you have and there is no harm in using flash with a bit of shutter drag. In fact, you might want to spend the money on a 420EX or something like that to give you more power. Gel it with some colour gels on it and you can get some really cool effects.<br /><br />You can also buy a Diana F+/Holda and use that in parallel. I shot a party with my DianaF+ and got some groovy shots by keeping the shutter open (you just hold your finger down on the shutter) and firing the flash manually using the test button. Unpredictable and some shots were really cool.<br /><br />If you really do want to buy a 35mm film camera in the end, get an AF Canon one. Why? You already have a Canon digital SLR so any lenses you get for the film Canon you can use on the digital one. Besides, the thing with film cameras is that they are all pretty much the same! The film makes the difference. So, if you really must buy a 35mm camera, get a EOS 3 from ebay. I bought one for £67. You get the best AF a film camera (of any brand) can have which is something you need in the dark. You get a tough body and high FPS. Get yourself a used Sigma 24/1.8 or Sigma 28/1.8 and then you have a fast wide lens to play with which you can also use on your 400D as a fast "normal" lens. Or get a 50/1.8. It becomes a fast normal lens on the EOS 3 and a very good short-tele portrait lens on your 400D.<br /><br />Just my thoughts. Hope it helps and good luck with your studies. :)</p>

<p>For starters, the sensors are bigger. Bigger chips are exponentially more difficult to manufacture. The silicon chips come in big wafers. From these wafers they cut out the sensors (to put it simplisticly). So, if you as a manufacturer buy a wafer and out of this wafer can cut 10 APS-C sensors for your Nikon D90, then from a same size wafer you can cut 5 "full frame" sesnors for a D3X or just 1 645-sized sensor for a 645 back. Just do the math, APS-C is 17x25mm, 35mm/full frame is 24x36mm and 645 is 60x45mm. You also have rejects. If the wafer is imperfect or damaged then you might still be able to salvage a few APS-C sensors out of the 10 you could have had. On the other hand, it's a complete waste for your MF back as you could only get 1 sensor out of it anyway.</p>

<p>Finally, as already said, it is low volumes. Canon and Hasselblad have similar design, research and manufacturing costs (this is a generalisation but bear with me) yet Canon can split these costs over the millions of products sold, while Hasselblad only sells a few thousand. So that greatly impacts the retail price. Think of it like this: if you want to sell hot dogs you need to buy the sausage and bun. If these cost 50c then you need to sell hot dogs for at least 50c to cover the ingredients. You then need to buy or rent the trolley to sell these out of and rent the curb space from the city hall. If the rent for the trolley and curbside space is $50/day and you want to earn $50/day to live, then your daily cost of business is $100. Plus the ingredients for each unit sold. So you can:</p>

<p>- EITHER sell just one hot dog per day at the price of $100.50 ($50 for the rent + $50 for you + 50c for the ingredients)</p>

<p>- OR sell 100 hotdogs for the price of $1.50 each. Because 50c from the $1.50 goes for the ingredients of that particular hot dog and the remaining $1 goes towards the rent and living (100 hotdogs x $1 = $100 for that day).</p>

<p>And not just that, but if you buy 100 hot dogs/day from the supplier you can probably knock down the ingredients price to 25c due to volume discounts, hence you can sell 100 hot dogs for $1.25. And if you go for the first option, it is debateable whether anyone will find the one person a day willing to buy your $100.50 hot dog. Which then means that if you can only sell 1 expensive hot dog every other day, to sustain the same living wage you need to be selling a $200.50 hot dog every two days to survive. And this way you can see how you can quickly price yourself completely out of the market, because if you can only find one person every other day to buy a $100.50 hot dog, how many are there to pay twice as much?</p>

<p>My EOS 300 works just fine and I bought a EOS 3 a few months ago. I sold all my digital equipment and bought a Bronica SQB as well and a DianaF+ toy camera. So it is all film for me and at 32, I'd like to think I don't classify as "old folks". And the number of people I see with Holgas and Dianas and Lomos around their necks is constantly increasing.</p>

<p>No you cannot get a new EOS film camera, your only chances are either the Nikon F6 or the medium format bodies from Contax/Mamiya/Hassleblad. But I hope that I'll have a chance to use up whatever used bodies are out there until I'm old enough to not be able to hold a camera.</p>

<p>Who knows what the future holds, but one thing for sure is that film will be here for a long time and it is actually cheaper than ever. Film prices have remained pretty much the same in the last 10 years and so have processing lab costs, as there is fewer work to go around but there are far fewer labs to spread it. So whoever remains in business actually gets more. My next step is to get an XPan and perhaps a LF body.</p>

<p>I've got an SQB. If it is anything like the SQA then you do this:</p>

<p>1. move the multi-exposure lever (the small one above the winder) down/forward.<br>

2. turn the winder to cock the shutter<br>

3. push and hold down the lens lock lever (in front of the shutter speed dial)<br>

4. twist and remove lens</p>

<p>The reason you cannot take the lens off is that the shutter is in the lens so if you don't cock it properly and remove it, next time you put the lens on the body it will not be in the right state. So all this inter-locking prevent errors like that.</p>

<p>A pair of CR2 batteries for my Rebel 2000 cost me a whole of $4 to buy and will last a year or more. I'm not sure I follow how that is expensive enough to warrant a mod to the camera or buying a BP-200...?</p>

<p>Nick, I believe UC and HD are no more? I think Ektar replaced UC and you can easily buy it from mx2 or 7dayshop or a bunch of other places. I've no idea what HD is supposed to be replaced by.</p>

<p>Can't be more specific, I use the Portra line which thankfully seems to be holding up to the weekly rebranding/discontinue/re-release cycle of the rest of Kodak's films.</p>

<p>I would generally avoid underexposing film, it makes it grainy and the colours are very muted. I generally prefer Portra 400 for normal daylight outdoor use and on a typical rainy UK day I will generally use Portra 800.</p>

<p>Just think of the exposure a bit: a bright sunny day is f/16 and 1/125 on 160NC. It is f/16 and 1/1000 on Portra 800. A heavy overcast day is 4 stops down. On 160 film that would be f/16 and 1/8 or f/4 and 1/125. Which is becoming a bit marginal if it gets any darker (back alleys etc). If you want to overexpose the film for stylistic reasons then you lose another stop, which puts you very near or inside the camera shake shutter speeds.</p>

<p>On 800 film you can still get f/8 and 1/125 if you want to for these conditions. Or f/4 and 1/500.</p>

<p>Don't be afraid to use faster film. Portra 800 in 6x6 (I assume that's what you have) shows pretty much no grain, the size of the film just takes care of that.</p>

<p>I've bought used cameras/lenses without issues from ffordes, Mifsuds, Robert White, Walters photo video in Wales, Ace cameras in Bath and T4 cameras in Swindon. The other obvious candidate is London Camera Exchange but their prices are generally high, although I have managed to get a couple of bargains from their Bath and Bristol branches.</p>

<p>I've used both in 120 and 135 and they are very similar, maybe the 400NC is a bit finer grained in my scans but it wouldn't be my main buying decision.</p>

<p>What <strong>is </strong> very different and <strong>is </strong> my main buying decision is the look of each film, the 400H being a lot more contrastier and with more vivid colours. It really should be compared to 400VC, with the 400H being more green and the 400VC more orange in look, or at least that's how my scans end up looking.</p>

<p>I agree, the number I quoted (14000x14000) for a 6x6 scan is just the theoretical of what you would get out of the scanner at full resolution. I did not mean that it is actually a usable 14000x14000 image for a 50'' print.</p>

<p>The actual usable resolution is probably half that or less, although I have not actually tried using a file that big to say for sure and as with all things, opinions vary on the max print size from a V700 depending on scanning software, subject matter, film, etc.</p>

<p>The important point I wanted to make is that a V700 is generally a much more economical and better quality solution than the "process and scan" options you get from labs. After a dozen "process and scan" rolls you will have paid the cost of a V700 and have just a bunch of bad, low-res scans to show for it.</p>

<p>So as said, you do them cheaply on a flatbed and if you really must have a super high quality scan, just let someone in a lab with the proper skills and equipment do it.</p>

<p>What Janne Moren said. I'll just add my experience.</p>

<p>If you want a MF camera first decide on the format. Since you will be scanning I'd say better go 6x6 or 6x7. Scanned 645 will probably not give you enough of a difference in look/quality compared to your D2X.</p>

<p>Now, as far as I know, the most viable cameras for future digital compatibility are the Hasselblad V cameras (503CW or other 50x model) for 6x6 and the Mamiya RZ67 for 6x7. They are different cameras for different things though, the Mamiya being very big and heavy.</p>

<p>However, I would recommend that you do look at other cameras that might not be digitally compatible, simply because something like a 6x6 Bronica SQAi or SQB is so cheap compared to a Hasselblad that when the time comes to buy a digital back it just won't matter (when forking out 5k for a digital back, another few hundred $$$ for a camera is nothing). I personally bought a mint condition Bronica SQB with 80/2.8PSB lens for 180 euros. It is a great camera, maybe not as nice as a Hasselblad but for 1/5 of the price you cannot complain and the lens is very very sharp, even wide open.</p>

<p>Once you get your camera, then the cheapest option is to get the film developed and scan it yourself, as affordable scans from labs are always horrible and good scans from lab will exceed the cost of a good film scanner after a dozen rolls. I would NOT recommend printing and scanning the prints. Scanned prints generally have low resolution and poor dynamic range, simply due to the way print scanning works.</p>

<p>What I do is I have an Epson V700 to scan my film. Negative/positive/B&W doesn't matter, you put the film in the appropriate holder, click the relative film option, scan and you get a nice image properly shown on your computer. Getting it right will take a few days of frustration, especially if you scan colour negatives, as you do not have any "reference" for what you see and the scanner takes a guess at what the film mask is. Scanning slides is much easier.</p>

<p>Personally I will use the Epson software, fiddle a bit with the levels sliders to get a relatively good scan and then fix everything else in Photoshop. I tried SilverFast and the VueScan demos but in the end the Epson software is fine for me. The other two are more powerful and can give you better scans, but I print directly from the negatives, the scans are for web use or relatively low 4000x4000 pixel scans, so it doesn't make that much of a difference to me.</p>

<p>My aim is to get a relatively flat-contrast scan with quite a bit of dynamic range in it and then adjust in Photoshop. Generally expect to spend a few days figuring things out, don't give up, in the end you will find a workflow and all the settings and it will then be quick and easy.</p>

<p>The V700 can scan a 6x6 negative to huge sizes, at full resolution and 48-bit colour you will get something like a 500MB file out (14000x14000 pixels or so). One of your main considerations when choosing a scanner for plenty of scanning, is to see how many negatives it can scan at the same time. For example, the V700 can scan 6 6x6 negatives or 4 6x7 at one time. A V500 I think can do 3 6x6 negatives. So this can slow you down a lot, if you have to scan plenty. Of course if you can afford a dedicated MF scanner then by all means do buy one, but these will be quite a bit more expensive than a V700 or equivalent flatbed.<br>

Once you scan the image then it is not different to any of your digital images, import to Photoshop/Lightroom/whatever you use and work as you would normally do.</p>

<p>There is also Photographique http://www.photographique.co.uk on Baldwin street in the centre of Bristol. I used to get my 120 C41 done there every now and then when I was in Bristol but never had B&W done.</p>

<p>Paul, get an optical sync for $5 or get a splitter or whatever to connect both flashguns. Two are better than one ;-)</p>

<p>You have to use it in manual mode. The 430EX does not actually do any calculation itself. The camera will calculate the exposure based on the camera settings and the pre-flash pulses the 430EX will fire and then the camera tells the flash what the power output should be. If you use anything but an ETTL EOS camera then the flash will simply not work. So you have to set the power yourself in manual mode, using the same guide calculations you would do with older flashes. Only this time you don't have a cheat sheet! :D</p>

<p>The infrared beam is purely for assisting the camera to autofocus in difficult light. Has nothing to do with exposure metering.</p>

<p>Tip: there is nothing stopping you doing a flash exposure test with your digital camera. Set the camera to use the same ISO and exposure as the Hasselblad and set the flash to manual power trying different settings until you get a good exposure on the LCD. The important thing is to take the test shot from the same location (or very close) to the position where you will eventually make the shot with the Hassy. If you change the relative distances between flash/subject/camera then the power ratios would change.</p>

<p>I used to use one on a 300 and 30E. Generally a good lens, a bit soft in the corners but the main issue I had was that it flared relatively easily. But overall, a pretty good and cheap way to do ultrawide.</p>

<p>Bronica SQB, EOS 3, EOS 300. I'm probably getting a Holga 120 next...</p>

<p>I've just got myself a V700 and have been trying scanning 120 negatives. I'll scan with EpsonScan, use auto adjust and then check the histogram to see it doesn't clip everything too much, but generally it is ok. I'll then import everything in Lightroom, which is where I do 99% of everything. I've so far made a preset for Portra 800 and 400VC which work ok, but these are only based on a couple of rolls each. Not sure if they'll stand the test of time, as more rolls get scanned.<br>

400NC for some reason has been trickier and I couldn't get rid of a cast, but, again, I've only scanned a couple of rolls so far which had been with flakey exposures and tricky lighting. So it might be just that.<br>

Bear in mind, I only scan for some web use, not for archiving or huge prints. I've just bought the V700 so so far haven't had the chance to scan high-res for a big print.</p>

<p>Generally if I post something Monday to them I get it back Thursday-Friday regardless of service (35mm/120 develop and/or print). I'm in London.</p>

<p>7dayshop is the cheapest and best if you are willing to wait a bit, takes them about 10 days from order to when it gets to my door (London). MX2 is a bit more expensive but is faster as they are UK based (instead of Guernsey or wherever 7dayshop is).</p>

16GB on a D70 is about 2800-2900 NEF images or quite a few thousand JPGs. What happens if it breaks/gets stolen/lost...

The D200 has two group control, unlike the D80 which can only control one group. This might be the difference.

I have the G. In the 70-135mm range it is quite good even wide open and and at 135mm

-200mm it degrades a bit but a stop or two down puts it back in order. From 200-300 it

is basically unusuable, it is impossible to get anything sharp no matter f-stops,

shutter speeds, tripods, etc. Generally, not a bad lens at all for everyday snaps and very

light travelling, even more so as I managed to find mine mint for $70! Just don't expect

prints over 7x5 to look particularly good.

 

The D I hear is a bit better but still bad at 200-300mm. Personally, I don't think it is worth

it. If I am to get a mediocre lens, I might as well get the cheap one.

Yes you can. I have the same combo and it works brilliantly. The comms channel is fixed to 3A on the D70s. Check the D70s manual. You then need to set custom function 19 (I think) for the flash to work in "TTL commander" mode. If you cannot see custom function 19 then you need to go to the setup menu and set the extended custom functions option.

The cheapest solution would be to get a diopter and use it on the 55-200. Look for either

of the 3/4/5/6T. Check the size matches the one of the 55-200. You'll get max

magnification at 200mm. You then use the zoom ring to set magnification and move

back/forwards to focus while using the focusing ring. Annoying, but the 50 with rings is

also annoying.

 

A macro lens will be better than either of those solutions and a lot more convenient. And

you can still use the macro lens as a normal lens. You can look for a Sigma/Tamron

instead of Nikon. Their 105 and 90mm models are excellent and a lot cheaper than the

Nikon equivalent. It also gives you a fast lens in the 100mm region, which you lack with

the 55-200.