les_campbell

This was much discussed when the D100 first came out; essentially, Nikon chose not to blow

out the highlights, and so unmanipulated pix can appear somewhat dark. IMHO it's better to

have the detail in the original file, and it's easy to goose the RAW file after the fact.

Try the Get Info command (Command-I) on a .psd file. Select the "Open with"

section. Pull down on the menu and select Adobe Photoshop CS. Then click

on the button that says " Change all..." That might work.

If you were to search the archives, I think you'd find many people who happily

bought gear from Robert White and had it shipped to the US. I bought a full

Mamiya 7 outfit (body and three lenses) and couldn't have been happier.

They shipped via UPS, who also acted as the customs broker. It got here

within 5 days, as I remember (and I'm on the West Coast). Mamiya of America

(MAC) can't do a thing as long as it's for your personal use. Of course, should

you need warranty service, you'll have to ship it back to the UK (I had no

problems). Some years later, though, it still gripes my cheese how much MAC

marks up Mamiya gear compared to the rest of the world.

Agfa's website has all sorts of great stuff, including some worthwhile

FREE online photo tutorials. Take a look at</P>

 

<P><A HREF="http://www.agfanet.com/en/cafe/photocourse/">http://

www.agfanet.com/en/cafe/photocourse/</A></P>

 

<P>If you're not a native English speaker, just go to <A HREF="http://

www.agfanet.com/">http://www.agfanet.com/</A>

and pick your language.

I bought my complete M7II outfit via RW and was very happy. Mamiya of

America just marks the stuff up horrendously. You won't pay VAT if you live in

the USA; there's just the duty, which is less than sales tax in most states.

Shipping was very fast via UPS (2 or 3 days, and I'm on the West Coast), who

also acted as the customs broker.

Best try 3200 ISO film, either Kodak or Ilford, both black & white, especially

with your slower Tamron lens.

Your OS X iTools are the way to go (ideally on a newer G4 with a SuperDrive

-- built-in DVD burner), and there's a lot of different options.

 

1) iPhoto -- just dump a bunch of photos into an album, pick the amount of

time you want each photo displayed, pick a tune to play behind them. You

then export it to iDVD.

 

2) iDVD -- you can assemble your slide directly in iDVD. You can have timed

displays, or put in forward and reverse buttons that will interact with a DVD

player's remote. You can put in music here, too, but if you have forward/

reverse buttons, its playback will suffer. If you skip buttons, you can put in a

piece of music and iDVD can automatically time your slide show to end when

the music does.

 

3) iMovie -- if you want your slideshow to just play (without any interactivity)

and you want to put in nifty effects, timed music cues, assemble it here (into

one or several movie clips that you'll then import into iDVD). You can vary the

interval every photo is displayed, use a bunch of different transitions between

shots, have 2 different soundtracks (to fade in/out, etc.) and generally have

more control, albeit with more work.

 

Note: Keep your resolution down. You should aim for 640 x 480 resolution for

slide shows maximum, or 720 x 480 for iMovie.

 

Have fun.

Re: no aperture ring on the 70-200 AF VR -- the only camera bodies able to

take advantage of VR technology all have the capability of setting the

aperture though the camera. So Nikon saved a couple of bucks... makes

sense to me.

Keith -- Always great when you've already ordered, then someone tells you to

wait, eh?

 

I have an F100 and got the D100 shortly after it came out last summer. I'd say I

use the D100 at least five times as often as the F100 anymore. Super A3

prints from the D100 using an Epson 1280 (I think it's the 1290 for you) look

fantastic -- and better, IMHO, than 4000 ppi scans of Velvia slides because

film still has grain.

 

And don't worry about what you paid. Digital cameras are like computers --

there's always a better, cheaper one waiting around the corner. But when you

buy NOW, you get to use it NOW -- and who can put a price on that?

I do know Mac software, so that's how I'll respond. A combination of iMovie

and iDVD will do the job very nicely, and you get the software for free on any

new Mac with a SuperDrive (i.e., CD and DVD burner/player drive built in). If

you want to spend a lot more money, you can get Final Cut Pro or Premiere

for your slide show, and DVD Studio for making your disks.

 

Oh yes, and you'll need a slide scanner.

If you're images are coming from a digital camera (and with dimensions of

1200 x 1600, I assume they are) and you're trying to print at 11 x 14 inches, I'd

suggest you first try printing at a lower resolution rather than upsampling your

images. Especially if you're shooting in RAW or TIFF mode.

 

A digital camera with a decent lens is going to give you a higher quality digital

image than a scanned slide/neg at the same resolution -- no noise, grain, etc.

You might be surprised at how good a 108 ppi/dpi printed image can look.

My advice is forget the accessory finder altogether. I had it, but almost never used it (the camera's finder shows crop lines for the 150mm). Spend the money on film instead, or Mamiya's circular polarizer.

You can buy a used version or reprint from Craig's Camera, who has just

about every camera manual ever printed.</P>

 

<P><A HREF="http://www.craigcamera.com/ib_nikon.htm">http://www.craigcamera.com/ib_nikon.htm</A>

I used my F100 in Quebec in temps about -10 to -25 degrees F. The cold meant the batteries drained extremely fast -- like after 4 or 5 rolls. And before the batteries died altogether, I was getting some of the infamous F100 electrical quirks, like skipped frames, early rewinds, etc. I started keeping the camera inside my jacket and that seemed to help some.

BTW, the price of used medium format gear is pretty depressed these days, as many, many wedding/portrait photographers are selling their gear to go digital.

The D100 underexposes high contrast shots, period. Apparently this was intentional; from what I've read Nikon was concerned about the camera blowing out highlights, and assumed (rightly, I'd say) that users of a digital camera would prefer to have the highlight detail maintained while fixing the rest of the exposure in the computer. If you want true white in your unretouched photo, you'll need to use exposure compensation for high-contrast scenes. I confess I'd gotten pretty complacent about matrix metering in my Nikon film cameras; now suddenly I have to think again. Oh well.

 

And your polarizer, as long as it is a circular polarizer, should be just fine (if it's a linear polarizer the lens probably wouldn't be able to autofocus).

 

By the way, setting the camera to A means the camera is set to Aperture Priority, not automatic. If you want the camera to figure out f-stop and shutter speed for you, you need to set it to P for Program.

 

Also, I'd recommend (while I'm at it) not using automatic white balance. Get into the menu and experiment with different settings. I usually have mine set to Cloudy -3 -- it's equivalent to a modest warming filter.

I bought Lowe's Sideline Shooter (here's the <A HREF="http://www.lowepro.com/pages/series/trekking/sideline.htm">page

on their web site</A> that describes it). Nice and lightweight; carries

the body (with 80mm attached), 43mm and 150mm, accessory viewfinder, a few rolls of film, etc. Fairly inexpensive, too.

I'd go with Provia 100F and 400F.

 

But my first suggestion would be to type "lava" in the little search box on the upper right on photo.net.

Get back in the pros' way, momentarily, and find out where they take their stuff to get printed. There should still be a few wedding/portrait photographers who are still using film.

The biggest difference between the M7 and the M7II is the rangefinder -- it's brighter and easier to use in the M7II. A few things got moved to better places (e.g., PC sync port). Nothing that major -- mostly conveniences. The Mamiya 7 lenses are the real reason to buy into the system: they're fantastic.

 

The weight difference between the Mamiya and the Bronica is neglible -- not quite 4 ounces, or a little over 100 grams.

 

Both use a center-weighted meter, as a previous poster mentioned. It works well, except in some obviously tricky situations (backlighting, dark subject against light background, etc.). It takes practice to get used to. Or if you're used to using an 35mm SLR from the 1960s or 1970s, you're already used to it. But whatever system you get, be sure you shoot with it a lot and know all of its quirks before you arrive in the Land of Irreplaceable Shots (aka the Land of Limited Spare Parts).

 

Ultimately, either system would be great. The Mamiya lenses are a bit better, perhaps, but most folks would be hard put to notice the difference. Best for you, perhaps, to decide if you want the bigger negative/transparency or not.

 

As for the Fuji, maybe a bit more plasticky on the outside, but Fujinon lenses are great. And no dust gets inside a fixed-lens camera.

 

Bon voyage.

I use 35mm filters on my 35mm gear, which I tend to knock around a little bit more, but not on my M7 stuff.

 

As for cases, I use a Lowe's Sideline Shooter -- a waistpack that holds my M7 with the 80mm attached, plus the 43mm and 150mm lenses, auxiliary finders, 6-8 rolls of film, etc. I'm not sure if Lowe still makes it, but I think so. But with any bag, try to bring your gear (or ask to borrow the store's demo gear) to fit into the bag -- you need to assure yourself it will fit and work with you and your body/shooting style.

Please remember a few other things when hunting for lava photos:

 

1) Lava (that has cooled and solidified) is very hard and abrasive. You'll be hiking over a lot of it to get to current lava flows. If you fall down on it, or drop camera gear on it, there will be painful damage. Wear good shoes, not sandals, and consider long pants.

 

2) When the lava hits the sea, the big steamy clouds that result also carry very fine particles of volcanic glass, which is picked up by the offshore winds and thrown good distances. Bare skin can get lots of fine, bleeding cuts that really won't hurt you too much. However, you might want to put a cheap filter over that expensive lens.

 

3) Because the lava is so hard and geologically new, even thousands of feet wandering over it the past 20 years haven't worn a recognizable path through it. Since you have a long hike to the hot lava at dusk (and a long hike back in the dark), I strongly advise you to pay for a local to guide you there and back, if you can find one. The US National Park Service, while it doesn't forbid you from going into the lava fields, advises against it, and says they won't come in to rescue you.

 

4) Carry lots of water, too. And a flashlight (or two) for every person.

 

5) Photographically, Provia 100F and 400F should be fine. Bring a tripod.

There are a few factors that come into play here, it seems to me:

 

1) Limited customer base for MF/high-end equipment. A camera shop in Lincoln, Nebraska trying to sell a used Mamiya RB67 might find it sitting there for quite a while.

 

2) Limited availability of used equipment for MF buyers. You can only find it in big cities or through large mail order places like KEH or B&H, etc. On any given day eBay will have more quality used MF gear for sale than any brick-and-mortar store you could imagine.

 

3) Photographers selling off their gear. If you trade it into a camera store, they'll likely pay you about half of what they expect to sell it for. If you put a classified ad in the paper, your response will be limited (as per point 1). If you sell your gear on eBay (and a lot of wedding photographers migrating from MF to digital are doing just that right now) you'll get a much better return on your investment, even if you get less than what KEH is selling the same gear for.

 

I've bought a lot of stuff on eBay (and sold a fair amount, too), including items costing more than $1000. I've never had a bad experience. The eBay equivalent of Cambridge Camera or Smile Camera isn't hard to spot -- they're selling a hot item (say, a newly released Nikon body that isn't available anywhere) for a too-low price; they have few or no feedback listings and/or they have shades indicating a new screen name. As always, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

What I know about optics design could fit on the end of a lens pen, but I have read repeatedly that rangefinder design just does not allow much telephoto range. Leica's longest lens is 135mm after all, and the M7's longest is 210mm -- equivalent to about 100mm in 35mm terms, with a minimum aperture of f8, closest focusing distance of 23 feet, and it's not rangefinder-coupled (you have to focus using a distance scale). In other words, it's near useless, and the 150mm is more practical (equivalent to about 71mm in 35mm). But with any of the Mamiya 7 lens you can't focus more closely than a head-and-torso portrait.

 

If you want true telephoto in MF, you're going to have to haul a SLR system and tripod around.

The difference between 35mm and 6x4.5 is much greater than the difference between 6x4.5 and 6x7. Moving up to any MF size will give you the WOW factor when looking at your negs/slides.

 

I have the Mamiya 7 -- it IS great, but it's best for travel and landscapes; it can't take a tight headshot. But as for 6x7 being almost square, well, what it is almost is an almost perfect ratio for enlarging to 4x5, 8x10, 16x20, etc.

 

As for a meter -- no meter or meter/finder for any current MF camera that I'm aware is on a par with the meters on today's top 35mm SLRs. They're usually center-weighted, and predictably fooled. But time and practice will get you used to your camera's meter and it will work for you almost all the time.

 

For cost, weight, and a great quality lens, I'll cast another vote for the Fuji rangefinders. It's a fixed lens, but what a great one. You can often find a used 6x7 model for under $1000 US.