polizonte

<p>With the goal of maintaining a 3 lens arsenal (due to weight & portability issues + an amateur's budget constraints, my lenses were purchased one by one and I am old enough to possibly not outlive the 10 yr. recycle of these lenses) : I own a D700 and have been using using a 60mm AFS G as a normal & close-up lens and a 105mm AFS VR as a sub-telephoto & close-up lens and a 14-24mm AFS for wide angle shots. I am pondering the purchase of a 70-200 VR ii for more reach (than the 105mm) in landscape photography and dispensing with one lens of my arsenal.<strong> Which of of the two Micro-Nikkors would become most redundant</strong>, my normal or the sub-telephoto lens due to the acquisition of the 70-200 VR ii zoom? Is the breathing issue so marked that the zoom lens @70mm ( a positive side to breathing/wider focal length) could replace the 60mm as a normal lens or the more obvious 105mm (due to increased focal length) for more distant shots? Of the two Micro-Nikkors, i use each almost equally for close-up photography but real macro work does not make the bulk of my photos but as a former 55mm f3.5 owner there are times when I still want to photograph flowers or small, slow moving animals. <strong>WhichMicro-Nikkor could be most easily replaced by the new zoom?</strong></p>

<p>I can relate to not "getting the courage": I use a 60mm (my normal lens) & 105mm AFS micros (my sub telephoto) with a D700 for close-up and landscapes but often would like a little more reach, not for close-ups nor action, but for landscapes. My concern has been the fear of being disappointed with distortion levels of a telephoto zoom compared to my primes. For an amateur on a budget the other telephoto prime lenses are beyond my means but this new zoom is very tempting.</p>

<p>I am a Nikon D700 user and recently purchased a 5Dmkii and paired it with a real bargain lens, the EF 200mm f2.8 L ii - for a reasonable price ($240+ less than the EF135 L) it's sharp, distortion free, portable, and creates nice blur when I want it. Once you have purchased the zoom lens, for your candid street photography of more distant subjects you might consider this lens also.<br /> <img src="../Users/el_polizonte/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/Apr 21, 2010/Back channels-5.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>300mm f4 AFS G VR<br>

200mm f2.8 AFS G with VR or without</p>

<p>300mm f4 AFS G VR<br>

200mm f2.8 AFS G with VR or without</p>

<p>Donaldo,<br>

Once the crisis has passed, buy another <strong>40D</strong> body so you don't have to switch lenses so often and maybe you will miss fewer shots also!<br>

Good luck!</p>

<p>As a former owner of a Canon 17-40mm f4 and a current owner of a Nikon14-24mm f2.8 AFS, purchased when it cost $330 less than the present street price, the new 16-35 f4 AFS VR seems to be reasonably priced; the f4 maximum aperture wouldn't be a drawback for me since I shoot @ f8- f11 most of the time. The VR feature would be a useful feature for nature photos taken while kayaking/canoeing as well as the option of using a protective filter. I imagine the new lens will compete with and/or bring down the price of the 14-24mm a bit.</p>

<p>Got a call from the Detective today and when I arrived at the station she spoke at length about the investigation, how she told the family where I had found their father's body by showing them the last photo taken from across the bay (with the back-up card and emailed to the PD, a non-graphic photo). She returned my memory card and thanked me personally and on behalf of the victim's family members. She gave me the link to the 1/29/10 seacoastonline article about his life and the funeral service: He was 55 years old and had become depressed after suffering a stroke because he had no hope of ever returning to work as a heavy equipment operator. As I left the police station, I felt overwhelmed and just wanted to get away as soon as possible.<br>

Around 2pm I launched my kayak, this time bringing along my new 60mm AFS G (bought myself a 60th birthday gift) & a D700: Taking photos as I paddled down the Piscataqua River to Fort Constitution, Whaleback Island, and out to a frosty 2KR Buoy and I returned to the back channels just in time to hear taps as the flag was being lowered at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.</p>

<p>After my hard drive died I used a <strong> Lexar</strong> (card manufacturer) program to recover images from my memory cards;another, <strong>SanDisk RescuePro Deluxe </strong>might work also.</p>

<p>Dan B., After one trip to the PD and two phone messages, still no card as of 1/31 but as the saying goes: The wheels of justice do turn slowly. The scene photos shot from the water were my contribution and to be honest, they are not images I would keep on my MacBook. An unscrupulous photographer with a morbid interest in such images could have taken a number of measures to abscond with them. As Dick Arnold mentioned, the Maine/NH seacoast is a beautiful place to live and take photos. </p>

<p>I've sold my photo gear and books on Amazon.com Marketplace; I have had good luck with USPS Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. The commission pays for Amazon's ad and the handling of the transaction.</p>

<p>1/21/2010 I launched my kayak, armed for the first time with my D700/105mm AFS VR (instead of fishing gear) to take photos of the Piscataqua River (between Portsmouth/New Castle NH and Kittery Maine). Too windy to venture into open water and to avoid getting salt spray on my expensive equipment it was necessary to stick to the back channels. After half an hour of gratuitous duck/seagull/dogs jumping into the water photos, I came upon what appeared to a homeless person clutching a walking stick, sleeping on a flat surfaced rock just above the water line on Peirce Island. After taking a few shots, I sensed something was wrong, and called 911 to check on the man's well being because it was too cold to sleep on a rock with no blanket. The 911 operator told me to stay on the line as long as my cell phone had sufficient charge. As I got paddled closer to him, through the lens the image morphed into a man who had possibly fallen and sustained a head injury; as I nervously took more photos, the wind pushed my kayak towards the west and the top of his head came into view. I informed the 911 operator the walking stick was a rifle or shotgun and that it appeared that this man had shot himself. I paddled a distance away from the scene, beached the kayak, and ran up an embankment to the snow covered lawn of Peirce Island Park, waving my arms and yelling to direct police the exact location of the body. The female officer who arrived first told (barked) me to leave." Okay I'm going, I'm sorry". What had I done wrong? I called 911, too care not to tread anywhere near the body, took all my photos from the kayak in water. Then she told me not to leave, that they were "... concerned about images that might be contained in my camera." After the usual questioning, a very nice female detective took more notes and introduced me to the Portsmouth Chief of Police, who thanked me. She then asked me if before the police arrived, had there been any footprints in the snow covered lawn above the body. I said "... no, just one trail of small animal prints but not near the victim". I handed over my CF card to the detective and asked her to please mail it to me when she was done with it, with my duck/seagull/dog images intact if possible. She asked me to paddle back to where my car was parked (New Castle, NH ) to make an audio recording of the interview. When I arrived to where I had started from, two newspaper reporters showed up, both carrying Canon (full frame) equipment; nice guys, it was almost a moment of comic relief after such a sad ordeal; they complimented me on my D700. They left, the detective arrived, recorded the interview and thanked me again. On my way home, I put my back-up card in the camera and stopped on the roadway across the bay from the scene and snapped a distant photo of the crime scene investigation unit and one lone patrol car. </p>

<p>The number 151 is the number that shows on the LCD with the "empty card" after reformatting; maybe the update is still "somewhere" on the card. </p>

<p>All my other 4G SanDisk Extreme IV and Ducati cards read 155; the 4G LEXAR X233 card I used to down load the firmware update has been reformatted 5 times but still reads 151 when placed in any of my D700's. The card shows "0" files when put into the card reader connected to my MacBook - I suspected remnants/crumbs of the firmware update are still on the card or it has bad sectors. I'm sorry for making such an issue out of this, it is my cheapest card and it still works.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone. From your responses I think maybe the card was somehow damaged maybe while transferring the update from the MacBook. All my other 4G cards( Extreme IV ) still read 155 as before.</p>

<p>I recently used a 4 G Lexar Professional CF 233x Speed card to download the 1.02 firmware update for my D700 After successfully installing the update, I formatted the card and noticed in the top LCD 151 photos instead of what had always been 155. I tried erasing it with my MacBook, reformatted it with the D700 and still the same reduced capacity. I tried the card in two other cameras and got the same results. Can anyone explain this phenomenon? </p>

<p>Ellis Vener, did you acquire a 60 f2.8G and if you did, has it produced the results you wanted ? Forgive me everyone for responding to an old posting, I would imagine forum members frown upon this practice. I consider myself a clueless hobbyist who has only scratched the surface of Lightroom 2, but your original question is similar to my ongoing lens dilemma; performance at or near infinity doesn't concern me as much as normal/closer than normal distances. After a year of using two Nikon lenses with my D700, 14-24 AFS G and 105 AFS G VR (purchased before the price increases) and "to fill the gap", last summer I purchased a 50 f1.4 G. and sold it soon afterward because of whatever it was ( ¿distortion?) that didn't grab me like the other two lenses. </p>

<p>I owned /used both the EFS 60 and EF 100 with my former 40D but for close-up photos I got better results with the EFS 60; it was more portable, easier, and more fun to use, and even at current prices it is a real bargain. I tended to use the EF 100 macro more often as a telephoto and eventually sold it to buy an EF 200 f2.8 L and never missed it at all. I found that closer to sunset I could get very close to bees and other insects without spooking them. The EFS due to its shorter focal was easier to maneuver around branches, leaves etc, allowing me to get closer to my subjects so the extra 40mm of the EF was no advantage at all in my type of photos.</p>

<p>José,<br>

Mil gracias por tu aporte. ¡A vos y tus seres queridos, les deseo un feliz año nuevo!<br>

Tom</p>

<p> Approaching 60 years of age, more uptight than I care to admit...I thought it was a funny video. </p>

<p>Two loosely related and I hope not totally off topic observations:<br>

<strong>DX to FX</strong> I purchased a D700 while still owning a Canon 40D; after seeing how much less noise appeared in low light photos taken with the Nikon, the Canon DX camera & lenses were sold to buy Nikon lenses . Almost a year has passed and although I love the D700 enough to buy a second body if I could afford to, shooting my amateur 1:1 closeups with the DX camera + Canon EFS macro seemed easier. <br>

Your <strong>16-85mm AFS Nikkor</strong> is a nice portable, low distortion lens. I bought my wife a Nikon D60 w/kit lens (nicer monitor than my Canon 40D) during the last days of Circuit City, sold the unused kit lens and bought her this lens before the price increase. This lens + any current Nikon DX should produce nice IQ & fit easily into a knapsack.</p>

<p>My first DSLR & lens combo was a Rebel XTi ( never bought the kit lens so my situation was different than yours) and a Canon EF 100mm macro which I sold after trying the Canon EFS 60mm macro; purely subjective reasons for doing this but the cheaper lens was more fun to use, still nice for portraits and I seemed to get better close-up results even with the shorter working distance. Focusing manually and/or moving the camera back & forth and flash improved my 1:1 photos also. This is a purely subjective observation but it might be worth trying it or a good copy of the Sigma 150mm macro (many photographers rave about that lens also) before settling on the 100mm.</p>

Robert Budding,

Nikon D700 from Hunt Photo $2,519.99 - free shipping within continental USA if ordered online 11/27 to 11/30.

It might be the limit of the lens/camera combination; @ 100% zoom in photoshop, I think you are asking a lot of a 6MP

camera. @ 100% zoom in iPhoto ( I know it's not he same) I noticed a difference going from from a 10MP DX to a 12MP

FX. Your question is not stupid, how could you have known what to expect? Are you talking about reasonably sized prints

or the image quality when viewed on your PC screen?

A 14-24 f 2.8 AFS if I could afford one or if it existed, a less expensive but equally corrected & sharp prime 20mm or 24

f2.8 AFS that could be used with filters.