noshir_patel

Get the Canon 28-105 f/3.5-4.5. It is quite good for a consumer level zoom.

The Canon 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 II USM is a very good lens. If I were you I would get that one. If you'd like better low light performance and can throw some extra money at it, get the Canon 28-135 with the image stabilizer, which is also a good performer.

Just want to point out (in case nobody else did) that when a slide is "professionally scanned", the scanner operator is doing things that you would need to do in Photoshop with a digital camera image. They might be editing intensity curves in the scanner software instead of Photoshop, but the fundamental operations are the same. Nobody prints from a truly raw scan.

I'd say there is only really one question... How rich are you?

I tried using my Canon Elan IIe as a meter for awhile, but got tired of lugging the extra bulk and doing equivalent exposure conversions in my head. I now use the extremely simple, small, and convenient Pentax Digital Spotmeter. When you see what it does and see the price, you'll think you're being ripped off, but when you try it and see how easy and effective it is to use, it's worth it. If you go this route, get the belt holster for it from Calumet.

I'm going to guess your 6x6 scans are going to be better than images coming out of a 6 megapixel camera. I'm sure my scans from 4x5 are.

 

The claims that 6 megapixel cameras are equal to or better than scanned 35mm comes from the fact that grain is a significant limiting factor in the print quality from film no matter what the scanning resolution. Higher end digital camera images are grainless. To the average person, a grainless but slightly less detailed image is likely to be perceived as better than a grainy but more detailed image. I rather imagine that the subject of the image makes a lot of difference. I've seen very good digital portraits, for instance, but I can imagine film winning in a high detail landscape (where fine detail will minimize the prominence of grain).

IS is better than a wide aperature for non-moving subjects. This is because you get the slighly increased depth of field along with the ability to handhold at a particular exposure value. I have taken pictures at shutter speeds like 1/8 sec (maybe even 1/4 sec) with the 28-135 IS and had them come out fine. I think this makes this a great "travel lens" for times when a tripod is too much and you only want one lens (and thus a reasonable zoom range). I think this is probably the best lens for your situation (replacing your current general purpose lens).

 

Wide aperature is better if you subject is moving. IS reduces camera shake blur, but cannot reduce subject movement blur. For this you want a faster shutter speed. For these situations, I like the 80mm f/1.8 and fast film.

You know, this question is very relevent if a used camera is being looked at.

I have the Sigma (for Canon) and it works just fine.

Actually, the grain in underexposed print film is there because the lab has to make extreme adjustments at the printing stage. If they print for the flash exposed portions and let the other parts go dark, there should be no more grain than in the dark parts of any properly exposed non-flash photo.

 

In your situation, I would suspect that the flash is not putting out enough light to properly expose your foreground. The lab would then have to print the whole image lighter to compensate and more grain would result. You should be able to look at your negatives and see if they are dense enough (the main subject should be much darker than than background which will probably be lighter orange). If you're not used to evaluating negatives, compare them against negatives of non-flash photos that printed well.

 

Your actual technique sounds fine (I do basically the same thing). You might find that your particular camera always underexposes with flash, in which case you could dial in some flash compensation, or you could be trying to take pictures too quickly one after another and not giving the flash time to fully recharge. You could also be shooting things outside the range of your onboard flash with the lens at f/8.

Bear in mind that most film cameras do not have a 100% viewfinder either. I'm sure the D60 will show what you are expecting (approximately, but very slightly less than, what the sensor will record). What I don't know is if the viewfinder image is as large as it is for a comparable 35mm camera. In other words, is it the 35mm equivalent but masked off to a smaller size or is the optical path different to keep the sizes similar?

In my opinion depth of field preview is nearly useless. The aperature stops down and the viewfinder darkens to the point of uselessness, and yes, it now shows the true sharpness of the scene, but who can judge from a darkened postage stamp sized image?

 

The lens that comes with a Rebel G kit (or just about any camera kit for that matter) is not that great, but ok if you are just starting out. It should be the first thing you replace if you start to get serious. One feature it will be missing is a distance scale which you could use to set focus to the hyperfocal distance to get everything sharp near to far (useful for landscape pictures). This is the technique you should learn and it will make DOF preview irrelevent.

 

The Rebel G is a fine camera body for a beginner, by the way. In fact, you may never need to upgrade. (Not everyone needs a camera that is built like a tank or shoots 10 frames a second or has 45 autofocus points...)

Portra VC actually should be reasonably saturated (the VC stands for "vivid color"). Portra NC is the low saturation version. Anyway, you can always increase saturation digitally. Same for contrast (and lower contrast would seem to be the reason for shooting negative film in the first place).

 

As for practicalities... I don't know. Yet. I have a box of Portra VC I'm planning on shooting at some point along with transparencies and comparing.

Wildlife is somewhat difficult to shoot in general. At f/6.3, I believe you'll lose autofocus capability (somebody want to confirm this?). Since your camera doesn't have a split image viewfinder for manual focus (few do these days), you are definitely not going to want to lose autofocus. Most people like slightly faster long lenses for wildlife (like 300 f/4).

 

My suggestion is forget wildlife and go for one of your first three choices. The Canon 28-105 is certainly a good lens which will work well in many situations. It is probably optically superior to the others and Canon has better reliability and quality control than Sigma. I've never used Tamron, so I can't comment on quality there. If you have some money later, you can consider getting something longer. For what it's worth, I have the Canon 75-300 IS and I consider it acceptable (though not terribly sharp at the long end) for those times I need a longer lens. Maybe a thought for the future.

 

I don't know what the rental situation is in South Africa, but if you are in a major city, perhaps you could consider renting a long lens for your safari (like maybe a 100-400 zoom or 300 prime).

You know about high speed flash sync with EOS dedicated flashes right? Get an EX series flash and it will work at any shutter speed.

 

(One wedding photographer I was interviewing had a D60 and was claiming that the main advantage of medium format over the 35mm cameras and the D60 was the ability to sync at any speed. I showed him the switch on his flash that made his D60 do this...)

 

I'm not sure if the D60 has a focal plane shutter or not. Are you sure it doesn't?

One way is to just click through someone's name and see if they have posted any images. Also, they can specify a website as part of their member info. I for instance, have a few images posted here, but many more on my <a href="http://www.blackpiano.com/noshirpatelphotography">website</a>.

Kaa,

 

You cannot arbitrily calibrate a monitor to any color space. In particular, you cannot calibrate a monitor to sRGB. Generally, when you calibrate a monitor, you set the white point and gamma, but the primaries are whatever the monitor's phosphors actually deliver. The primaries specified by sRGB are not in use in any production monitor that I know of. (There is actually a downloadable tool you can use to query your monitor for the primaries it uses, but I can't remember what it's called or where I found it.) To convert colors between color spaces with different primaries is a complicated operation that cannot be done with one dimensional R, G, and B lookup tables. These lookup tables are what calibration tools modify.

 

The world would be better off without sRGB. It is a sad attempt to define a "good enough" color space that manufacturers can pretend to match their equipment to so that your prints might sort of kind of if you squint at them funny match your monitor without having to worry about any of this complicated and messy color management stuff.

Yes you are correct. And assuming you're calibrating your monitor with Adobe Gamma or some hardware calibration tool, you don't need to worry about Kaa's comment because your profile will match your newly calibrated monitor.

Hmm... Ok, I just re-read Kaa's responses. While they didn't say what I thought they said, they still have problems. Maybe I can clarify.

 

Kaa does not appear to be saying PhotoCal did anything wrong. He does appear to be saying that your monitor may be profiled but not calibrated. This is not correct.

 

Yes, profiling and calibrating are different. PhotoCal calibrates your monitor AND saves a profile for PhotoShop to use. Same for Adobe Gamma. Almost nobody uses a totally uncalibrated monitor to run PhotoShop.

 

Your image will look exactly the same in PhotoShop and Internet Explorer (running on your computer) only if you convert to your monitor RGB profile before saving the jpeg. Think about it. Internet explorer just takes the RGB values and sends them to the video card. If the monitor RGB profile is attached to the image, then PhotoShop does the same thing (the image colorspace is defined as being what your monitor would display without conversion). If any other profile is attached to the image, PhotoShop converts the RGB values before sending them to your video card so that your monitor displays them as correctly as possible.

If you have PhotoCal and not OptiCal, I believe you are constrained to calibrating your monitor to 2.2 and not any arbitrary gamma (like 2.5, which is what I use... note: I simply use Adobe Gamma to calibrate my monitor, so you can expect better accuracy than I can). I disagree with the other poster who implied that your problems are being caused by a bad calibration. Bad calibration would only cause your monitor to fail to match other people's properly calibrated monitors (and printers, etc.).

 

In order to create the "Average Monitor" profile, you have to take on one of the most confusing areas of the product (in fact, it just took me several minutes to figure out how to get to the right dialog)...

 

Go to "Edit/Color Settings..." (in the menu). Under Working Spaces, change RGB to Custom RGB. A dialog will pop up. Type in "Average Monitor" for the name and change the other settings to what I had said (trinitron primaries, gamma 2.5, 6500). Click Ok. Now in the same place you chose Custom RGB from (Which should now say Average Monitor), choose Save RGB. A save dialog will pop up. The default filename is fine, so click Ok. Now the last step is to set your RGB working space back to whatever you prefer (Adobe RGB or whatever) and click ok to exit the dialog. Now exit PhotoShop. Now restart PhotoShop. Average Monitor should now be available when you use convert to profile.

 

Good luck.

Everything you describe is correct PhotoShop behavior.

 

Your jpeg is being saved in the color space you have chosen, but your browser is attempting to display it as if it was in your monitor color space. In other words, the browser can't tell what color space you are using. It is a myth that sRGB is a close match to an average monitor. It is not.

 

What you should do is create a new color space that represents an average monitor (call it "Average Monitor Space" if you want) with the following properties... Trinitron primaries, gamma 2.5, white point 6500. Convert to this just before you save for web. Since you probably have your monitor calibrated to gamma 2.2 it will still look a little off on your monitor, but it will look right on the average web user's. If you really want it to look right on your monitor (at the expense of looking slightly wrong for the average web user) then convert to Monitor RGB before saving (which is the profile of your calibrated monitor).

 

By the way, there is no reason you have to calibrate your monitor to a 2.2 gamma. You can calibrate it to 2.5 and then your monitor will be more consistent with the average user's experience (but more accurate) and your jpegs will look right on your box and as right as possible on everyone elses. This is how I have my machine setup. It took a long time to fully understand all of this color management stuff and I used to write image editing software for a living...

 

Hope that helps.

Don't forget that your are missing a focusing scale on your lens. Focusing scales are very useful, particularly for landscape pictures.

The Artixscan 1800F looks like a substantial upgrade to the Artixscan 1100, for which you can find some positive reviews on the net. I would expect it to substantially outperform the Epson 2450 (which I own), but as others have stated the Epson is fine for making 16x20 prints (actually, I would say 20x24... I've made some good prints of that size from scans made on it).

Forget software dust removal. Get a Staticmaster brush (1 inch wide or 3 inch wide depending on your film format... I have both). A couple of quick swipes of both sides of the film, and you just don't have to worry about it. Maybe you'll have a dust spot or two, but it's easily removed in PhotoShop and very often I have none.

<p>Advice for a novice:

 

<p>Any of the Rebel series camera bodies (G, 2000, Ti) are fine for a beginner. The vast majority of the features you get on higher end bodies are just not that important for the average non-professional user. Don't buy a kit (camera + lens), but buy a good lens separately. The 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 is fine (the one with the focusing scale, don't buy a lens without this... I might have the f numbers slightly wrong, by the way). Don't buy the crappy 50 f/1.8 that everyone is so in love with unless you really need a low light lens for indoor non-flash pictures and cheap.

 

<p>Don't buy locally unless you have money to throw away. Buy from bhphotovideo.com or adorama.com, the two most reputable places on the net. Do your homework on what you want instead of relying on salespeople. Read Kodak's Guide to 35mm Photography. This is how I bought my first camera (a Rebel 2000 with the 28-105 lens which I still use sometimes when I want a light body or my Elan II is broken).

 

<p>Judge people's advice by the results they obtain with their own equipment. <a href="http://www.blackpiano.com/noshirpatelphotography">You can find my photo's here...</a> (Ok, shameless plug, I know...)