yoni_perlmutter

Stylus Epic: good to excellent results with positive film.

Usually Kodak.

I was trying to pick a P&S out for my wife and a mutual friend.

My wife used (until it died abut a month ago) an ancient Olympus

50, or 5050 or something like that. It worked beautifully for about five years before it gave up the ghost. It was 5 MP with good colour

and clean JPEGS. It was not a resposnsive camera so buildings came out better than grandkids.

I use a Fuji E900 which I like very much as a knockaround and I offered it to my wife. Dutifully, she tried it, and said "nyet", not to her liking.

So, the camera should be compact and sort of pocketable - size is not critical, not too teeny-tiny, a 28-30 to 1XX lens, budget is $300, give or take, peepy-hole viewfinder required, decent output at 400 ISO, good and simple handling and control, RAW is not required, good body build is. Battery type, memory card type, and other things which do not directly impact on picture quality or operation have little relative importance.

I guess there must be 50 cameras which could answer this ad.

If someone has an idea for me, neither the brand or the model series

has any importance whatsoever. 7 or so MPs would do fine.

Our friend will take the same camera my wife chooses.

I visit DPReview, Steves Digicams and maybe another site or two every week or so

- to keep up with things; products, review, developments, trends . . .

I mostly read their announcements and reviews on P&S cameras.

I officially declare myself lost, lost without a compass or paddle.

Who can keep up with all of these new products;

announced in bursts, 10s of simultaneous product rollouts

(some from the same manufacturer)?

Mostly there is little to differentiate between and among them;

pricing is similar for most, performance too.

Some of the Ricoh's, the promise of the recently announced Sigma DP-1

and older, now unobtainable Fuji's with usable high ISO are differentiated

from the pack. But most are "me-too's", same-same.

Standouts are few and far between and it's not always the printed specs which tell

the story. Anyway, the specs look nearly the same to me as well. And the only

thing new is the higher and higher pixel count when 6 - 8 MPs would

do for nearly any P&S application - including for quality A4 sized prints.

I'm beginning to think that the camera brand, model or it's capabilities might

have less to do with getting good results than learning the parameters

(strengths & foibles) of whatever P&S camera you happen to have.

Maybe we should just learn how to use what we have

better than we're doing it now.

Vivek, I make the assumption that the lens was manually focussed,

unless you shoot with an F3AF. I've never seen this camera or any of (the 2 or 3?) lenses made for it. What I remember is that these lenses had a stellar reputation.

Which camera did you use?

What is that thingamabob on top of the Canoneer's camera?

Can you post a 100% of the shooter's right ear - that seems to be along the plane of focus?

What in the blazes is everyone looking at in the photo?

Thanks.

I don't know if these images are the kind you have in mind

but I used to work with an interior architect doing

"before&after" kinds of things for her catalog and brochures.

Once in while one got published, though that was not my aim.

Equipment was Cosina-Voigtlander Bessa R2 with one of 4 lenses

ranging from 15 to 75mm with cable release. And a tripod and Northern light. The included pics are either with the 15 or 21 and

eyeballed and bubble-levelled to 180.

Film is Kodak positive 100 ISO scanned on my CoolScan. Eposure times were longish, none faster than 1/30.

I did interiors and exteriors with this set-up. It was very inexpensive then and today they're giving it away.

You can probably do this with an inexpensive DSLR and good WA zoom, although I don't think any of the ones with which I'm

familiar are as good as the Cosina fixed FL.

I use Noise Ninja and it does what I want it to do.

I have it as a stand-alone product and as part of Bibble.

Other noise reduction software also works well and there are certainly valid, objective reasons as well as personal preference for choosing one over another. But this may have less to do with measurable criteria and more to do with your "taste" - or your client's.

Differences in output, where they exist, are often subtle.

You can try some of the software gratis for a trial period.

Keep and purchase what you like.

Whatever you choose, you'll need to spend some time getting used

to the product and how to use it effectively.

Journalism itself is in rapid decline. Newspaper closures and joint

partnering speak for itself. Advertising revenues are down as distribution numbers decrease as readership lessens.

So why shouldn't photojournalism be in decline as well as part and parcel of journalism?

I'm a jazz fan myself but that doesn't make these facts go away.

The best, always are dedicated macro lenses. There is no argument about this, I'm sure. As to which of the 5 or 6, well, that depends a lot on what you want to use them for. And personal bias, perhaps.

I like the 105 AF as an all-arounder. But they're all pretty good.

Here you'll also find agreement amongst many Nikon shooters that less expensive 3rd party macro lenses are no less good.

As to which lenses work with which gizmos there are some "standard"

and some really off-the-wall combinations which work well. I suggest you take a look at David Ruether's site; he goes into some detail about some surprising rigs which really do work well.

Then there's John Shaw's "Closeups in Nature" which I recommemend at the drop of a hat. And finally, best and surest of all is your very own trials & tribulations with whatever you have that will bring things closer.

I use a 300/4, 180/2.8, 80-200, 75-300, 75-150, 24-120 (at 70mm), and even sometimes moderate WA's with a Nikon achromat.

With the 300 & 80-200 any and all combinations of PC-11, TC14, and Canon 500D; with most of the rest either a Nikon double achromat or the 500D with a step-up.

I'm sure the veterans in the forum can guess which positive film

was used.

I use a PN-11 on a 300/4 AFS and it works well.

You can also use it in combination(s) with an achromat like the Canon 77mm 500D, and a TC (like the 14B or 14E).

With the PN-11 you'd have to focus manually (as with the TC14B).

Manually focussing the 300/4 is fast and easy with the PN-11 even with

the D200 viewfinder.

Also the PN-11 has a collar which is useful in keeping the lens balanced on a tripod. I got a plate (I got either a Kirk or RRS

plate). This collar is solid and can be flipped over for vertical shooting. It's 52mm of extension which is pretty hefty.

I'm attaching an older photo I made with this lens and the PN-11

using an F3 camera with an SB-17 TTL flash. What looks in the photo like film grain is film grain. I left most of it in during the scan

(Nikon Coolscan 5000) and did not PP it with Noise Ninja.

I looked at the Leica Forum posts to see if there might be a response to this thread. There is none. Definitely remove the "feisty" label.

Anyway, "feisty" always conjured up images of Popeye, a borderline sociopathic type.

The people who participate nowadays in the L. Forum are not like Popeye

and really do discuss interesting, if sometimes arcane photo stuff.

Maybe it's interesting precisely because of this.

Thanks for the post.

Capa's other lost negatives - the ones from Omaha Beach, D-Day -

which were ruined in a lab screwup in England are lost never to be recovered. I've seen the few - I recall 10 or so - which came through the firestorm and the laboratory aftermath unscathed in a Paris museum.

"As Capa might have said, " es una cosa muy seria".

The adjective feisty has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: showing courage

Synonyms: plucky, spunky

Meaning #2: irritable and looking for trouble

Synonym: touchy.

The above is from WordNet. It is a good definition IMO.

So my question is this. Why are the Leica shooters "feisty"

(or any more so than say, Pentax 6X7 shooters, and why do they

"wonder why a $5000 camera won't automatically take a great photo . . .?"

That's what the Nikon DSLR D3 costs as well.

I should think that they know the price of the camera has little enough to do

with whether one takes great photos, or no. Unless someone thinks they don't.

I go into the forum from time to time. I feel I have little to contribute

but I have certainly learned a lot of stuff. I sometimes use a Voigtlander

RF so I have an "excuse".

The conversation is typically at a high level as there are quite a number

of seasoned photographers - not the kind that have wandered cluelessly

into SLRland from P&Sland.

But "Feisty"? Are they plucky yet irritable and looking for trouble?

I dunno.

After all these years of not really noticing, I noticed and thought it an odd

choice of descriptor. That's all.

I'm sure you're going to get a lot of good suggestions from this site.

Mine is for you to get a copy of John Shaw's Closeups in Nature.

This is a clear exposition of most of the things you can do

(or might do) to get good macro pics, and how you go about doing it.

It's really more about guidelines and, common sense than "laws".

I am neither a zealot or that other term you bring up.

I repeat, I would be willing to listen to an argument as why why Macs are better . . .

We probably shouldn't be using analogies here because we have the thing itself to compare to itself.

We needn't imagine anything, nor do we have the need for abstraction or modeling. We have the physical thing itself to examine, the computer.

I've driven neither of the cars you mention. I drive a Peugeot 307 and I'm rather pleased with it. I used to own and drive a motorcycle.

There were times I rode in airplanes, helos,and really uncomfortable boats. But I don't know what this has to do with the points raised here.

Actually, I think I do get it. You've been a big help.

I must be a very hard case. No where, never have I seen or heard a convincing, rational argument which convinces that

one gains advantage using a Mac over a PC. Not for me, at any rate.

I was interested some time ago in getting a desktop Mac in order to avoid sharing the birth pangs of Vista because of driver and perhaps other compatibility issues. But when I learned I could get

an equivalent Dell machine for less money, better support, and with XP, I didn't feel the need to get the Mac. Pretty simple.

What is it you "do" with the OS which makes the Mac so attractive because of its OS.

I was always of the opinion that the OS should be so far in the background, so invisible, so silent that you hardly knew it was even there, that it should allow you to run applications effortlessly and with confidence and that it should be reliable. This has been my Windows experience since XP. And not too bad before XP either.

I'm not a "fan" or a "shill" of Windows. I use Linux and Windows, used OS2. I'm only sorry that IBM ceased their OS2 support.

Now that was a capable OS, well ahead of its time.

I'm sure the Mac OS is capable as well, and the laptop machine is beautiful; the T61 is beautiful as well.

I'd be happy to hear a cogent argument about why Macs are better.

I let an Epson 2100 sit idle for nearly 7 months as I was away.

When I got home I turned it on, ran the Epson head cleaning and

alignment program. It printed perfectly after that. That was in 2004

and the printer is still in perfect order.

Get it working as soon as you are able.

I don't think of myself as a Luddite or anything like that - I was a software engineer for a leading-edge industrial company.

I've developed software on diverse platforms for most of my working life. I do not understand the partisan attitude some people have in

regard to computer systems and OSs. I think this is more true of Mac

users; it seems to reach evangelistic proportions sometimes. Like I said, I don't get it.

Neither of these two interfaces is in my opinion "intuitive" - whatever that may mean. Do we have some "interface preference" genetically coded in us? I'm sure I don't.

My wife uses a Lenovo T61 for her work - not photo. I use a Dell

desktop and an older IBM T42(?), my musician son uses two Mac Pro

17" laptops in his work. The Mac is a beautiful machine and runs

some specialist software which (according to my son) is not available

on a Windows platform. One stays in his studio and the other goes with him on his gigs. They have both failed numerous times. The

PCs never have. But he needs that platform so he puts up with the

need to visit the service centre now and again. The hard disks fail.

Why do we get so excited about this?

Mr Monahan you are a hard case. Here is the nub of your difficulty in your own words:

"My only question is to what degree we can use post processing to get cheap glass to look like good glass."

Your confusion lies in the fact that you equate cheap glass with poor

results. While much cheap glass is isn't worth a damn, some perform excellently. Someone mentioned the 75-150; cheap and wonderful (IMO) - peanuts to buy, practically any 50mm lens (great value used), the 105/2.5 as Mr Williamson suggests and on and on . . .

Mr Iyer speaks of some inexpensive Vivitar lenses which perform well,

others who have tried to be helpful have other good suggestions.

Were you to take the post processing element out of the equation your answer would be staring you in the face. Good glass, inexpensive, or unbelievably expensive produces better pics than inferior optics, no matter how much or how little you might have paid for the inferior optics. That's easy to understand. Now you can add the PP element to your equation.

In truth, no one here has to prove anything to you, nor does anyone here owe you any kind of tests. You might understand from the tone and the subjective drift of these postings what the concensus of thought & practice is here in the Nikon Forum. I do not exaggerate when I say I would be flattered if one of my questions generated this level of interest in this forum.

Your initial question was a fair one, thought-provoking too as it

elicited considered responses from well-experienced photographers.

Now it's up to you to sift through the material and think hard about what it means. I believe if you did this it would end your misunderstanding.

Good luck with your choices.

Roy Cohn was Cowen's (Cohen's) nephew. That's the Roy Cohn of Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy and latterly of Angels in America.

Al Pacino in Angels played our good buddy Roy.

Roy played with his Lionel train set whilst he was in the closet - never to come out.

Did he become Chairman or CEO of Lionel?

Mr Symington, I'm sure you're tellin' it like you see it.

No joy from me. I've used something like 25 Nikkors from my first Nikkormat to my F to my F3 and on and on to my current D200.

I've used them in Harbin, China in January (really, really cold) to the Egyptian desert (really, really hot) to other places with dew points near 100%, on a myriad of airplane and helo flights,

4X4 overland trips (some truly bone-rattling), treks, and, once on a camel.

No set screw ever jarred loose, loosened or fell out; not once, not ever. This is from a diverse population of pre-AIs, AIs, AISs,

AF(D&S); some with exquisite build quality (metal barrel) and some

so-so (the 24-120). In actual fact, I've never had a photo equipment failure from any manufacturer's equipment in the 50 or more

years I've been taking pictures.

Perhaps the dealer from whom you purchased can aid you in getting a better hearing from Nikon UK and a better result. The dealer's voice

might have more impact than your end-user voice; perhaps they would intercede on your behalf.

Good luck.

See if there is a photographers' session which avoids the crowds.

In the summer of 2000 I shot (professionally) an auto museum in Mulhouse (France). Wonderful place.

I used a film cameras (F3, F801, F100), an SB-17, SB-22, reflectors, Fuji Reala, Pentax spot meter, AIS 20/2.8, 28/2.8, 35/1.4 and 85/1.4

with a borrowed 1325 tripod.

I used no filters other than either skylight or UVs. I used shades and other light deflecting tools (a hat always works for me) to defeat lowered contrast pics.

I overexposed 2/3 to 1 full stop in order to "have room" to correct WB/colour in the printing stage. I found the WA lenses the most useful and was able to be "creative" within my limitations.

The ambient lighting was ghastly with a mix of colour temps

impossible for me to evaluate.

If I were to do this today I would use Sigma 10-20, 28/2.8, 3 or 4 sb-800s, the same tripod (or similar), and would overexpose by 2/3 of a stop. At least, I think I would.

Today, I would correct the WB & colour using PP software after the shoot and would spend less of my time in trying to evaluate it on-site. With digital gear it's possible to make trial shots

and do your evaluations on-site on a neutral, colour balanced monitor.

Stable shooting platform, good light, accurate metering, 5 stops of

exposure differential, dead-on focus, decent glass, good eye for

what-makes-an-image, familiarity with equipment, sufficient manual dexterity, and at least basic PP savvy all helps in the making of a good image. And also sometimes luck - being in the right place at the right time. And luck it is, whether you believe you make your own or it falls on you from the heavens.

If you have all of these ingredients, and also better glass, the image

will be quantitatively better, "measurably" better.

But perhaps not necessarily to the casual observer who doesn't come armed with tools of measurement excepting his eyes, brain and expectation.

An image taken with used AIS 50/1.4 ($100?) at f8 may well be indistinguishable (or nearly so) from a similar image

taken with a new-fangle-dangle $1500 AFS zoom at a 50mm FL.

I have both kinds of lenses and I think I use both to good effect.

I am not trying to make the case that less expensive lenses will do

as well as more expensive ones, although sometimes, under some circumstances that certainly happens.

I am saying that always buying the most expensive glass will not

always yield results appreciably better than not buying the most expensive glass. But in the right hands, in the right circumstances,

better glass should yield better results, yet not always.

People buy expensive stuff for a feature or features which for you may be less important

(large ap, build, good edge-to edge from the get-go, bokeh, IR capability and etc.). Just as most things in photography

(or any serious hobby) are not "linear", lenses are also not.

You might be have to pay 2x or 3X more for an item in order to get

a 15% advantage in performance. And often this advantage can be realised only with deep experience and understanding about how to

capitalise on it.

Professional people often need this advantage to stay competitive.

"Professional" means earning a living from your craft.

Some hobbyists want this level of gear as well because they want it.

As hobbyists they don't need financial justification. If you have deep pockets, or go without lunch for a year, you can do this too.

So no, Photoshop does not reduce the value of good glass; their value is intrinsic. So yes, you can take great photos with some inexpensive glass, even excellent if you know their limitations. And yours.

In the meantime you might just want to take pictures and pick up the occasional Lotto ticket.