paul_dibiase3

Has anybody used this combination together? I would love to get the extra

reach of the TC-17e if it did not badly affect the lense's ability to autofocus.

I realize Nikon says use manual focus with this TC, but I also know that this

is a very conservative recommendation.

 

I will be using the lens for wildlife photography.

 

If you have used them together in the field, please let me know what you think.

 

Thanks.

I can't help but notice that Nikon has finally put their RGB meter in a lesser priced camera body (lesser by digital standards that is!). That is a good sign. This is a great meter and it should be a strong selling point for Nikon. F5 users I know all swear by this meter and do very little exposure fiddling compared to F100 owners and Canon owners.

I have an N75 and I truly enjoy it. I enjoy its light weight. I enjoy the many features it offers for the cost.

The meter is excellent. I have shot under many different lighting conditions and the meter is usually right in all but the most extreme cases. Overall, it's and excellent body for the cost.

 

I do not know much about the lens you are using. I use the 24-85mm AS-F lens and get great results. With my 50mm prime lens the images are very sharp. Did you use a tripod when you took the photos? If not your shaking may the problem.

I can't argue with the praise for the F100. I will add that the old N90s gets plenty of use when I must put a camera body "at risk". For example, travel to a place where tourists get ripped-off, or for use near water and sand.

 

The build, features, reliablity and autofocus of the N90s are great. It's just that the F100 is even better. :)

I have had this camera for over a month and have done quite a bit of

shooting with it. Overall, I am impressed. I like its light weight

and small size. With the 24-85mm zoom it is a nice camera for

general travel photography and it is great for carrying on long hikes

uphill. The light weight and small size are its #1 benefits in my

book. That and the fact that you don't give up to many modern

features to get them.

 

The autofocus is more than adequate, though for shooting moving

subjects the N90s or F100 is preferable. That should surprise

nobody. I am impressed with its metering system. At first I was

skeptical that the 25 segments were marketing hype. However, after

shooting a number of slides in varied lighting conditions, I have to

say that this meter is very accurate. It is much better than the

N90s and appears to be an equal to the F100 meter. I have found the

F100 meter to be very good surpassed only by the F5's RGB meter.

 

Of course, this body is not for use with the manual focus lenses or

with the TC's that don't pass through metering information. It won't

meter with them. There are a number of little quirks. For example,

to get continious autofocus on a moving subject you must use the

sports program. A minor annoyance since I would not choose this body

if I was going to photograph rapidly moving objects.

 

I purchased the optional battery holder and grip. While somewhat

expensive they allow the camera to be used with AA batteries instead

of the tiny and expensive S2 batteries. I can load the holder with

$1 worth of AA batteries instead of $7 worth of S2 batteries. The

payback is about 7 battery changes. And AA batteries are much easier

to find out in Podunck Junction, and they match the batteries used by

the F100.

The F75/N75 is the camera the F65 should have been. :)

 

Read http://bythom.com/n75.htm for a good review of the F75.

Doug has a good point at 200mm and f/2.8, the shutter speed may be fast enough to cover for a bit of shake. But, for me at least, above 200mm I need a ultra fast shutter (1/500 at least) to freeze the shakes. In my corner of the world we often have thick, dark clouds which force the use of low shutter speeds even when using ISO 400 film. VR is a real help under those conditions.

 

Of course, VR does nothing for subject motion, which is still my #1 problem when shooting wildlife, flowers, etc.

I am not sure that comparing films of different ISO values is valid when discussing image quality. One would assume that the 100 speed film will produce a better image, unless motion is a problem.

I am cautious about buying into an Olypus system. They had a great SLR system in the 80's called the OM system. However, for some reason they stopped advancing it. Features such as autofocus, USM/AF-S, IS/VR, a larger variety of lenses, etc. were not developed. Now, I understand Olympus has stopped manufacturing OM bodies and lenses. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Nikon makes plenty of bodies that meter with the older lenses. I understand the new D2h has this capability. Am I wrong? Backward compatiblity is becoming less and less important as change sweeps through the camera marekt. This may be sad and unfortunate, but it is also true.

This was my first Nikon Autofocus camera. It is well built and very reliable. The autofocus is quick and works well in very low light conditions. It does lack the five spot pattern of modern autofocus cameras, but it also has a wide area sensor that allows the autofocus to pick up subject not exactly in the center. It drives the regular and AF-S lenses very quickly.

 

The meter is also good, but I have noticed that the F100 is a bit better. On a recent vacation where I wanted to travel light I brought only the N90s, I have that much faith in it.

 

One tip: if you get one use Lithium batteries. Alkaline will work but the Lithiums give the N90s a snap and speed winding film. The Alkalines as they wear down, will not always power the winder with the speed it is capable of.

Speaking of deals has anybody noticed the double rebates if certain lenses are purchased with certain bodies. Example, the N75 currently sells for $199 at B&H (USA price). Buy a 24-85 AFS zoom and get the extra $50 rebate. The N75 body now costs $149. Buy, a 80-400 VR lens with the extra $100 rebate and the N75 body is effectively $99.

The most important piece of equipment I need is time. More time to shoot would improve my images far more than a new lens, sturdier triopod or digital body. When AM finds a way to add a few hours to the day, or days to the week, let me know.

Shun,

 

I paid about $560 for my Sigma several years ago and it is definetly one of the 'best buys' and one of the best lenses I own. My point is that Sigma makes some very good lenses. However, today's situation is different with the new Nikkor 300mm f/4 AF-S lens, so, given the necessary cash, I would go that route. On the other hand I have not rushed out to sell my Sigma and buy the Nikkor. That says something.

In any event this is really about a Canon lens, so I probably should leave the discussion to those who own that equipment.

The Eastside Camera Club had it's first meeting of the new season last night (9/5).

 

http://www.cameraclub.00show.com/

 

We heard a fine presention on panorama photography from a pro who specializes in such work. He showed us a collection of photos from a stock agency catalog, all of which were panoramas. Wonderful and inspiring photos. He also showed us some of his equipment including a panaorama camera with a special graduated filter to compensate for light loss at the edges of the 7 inch wide negatives! The ND graduation was from the center out!

 

He also showed us a nifty head that keeps the nodal point steady. This makes it easy to stich together separate photos to make a panorama. Very nice.

 

http://www.cameraclub.00show.com/

The Eastside Photo Club meets in Bellevue every month. The first meeting is sometime this month, but I do not have the date. It's more convenient for those living on the Eastside of Greater Seattle since one does not have to fight the awful freeways and bridges to get into Seattle.

I've got the Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO Macro lens for the Nikon mount. It is one of the best lenses I own. Extremely sharp and focuses down to about 4 feet. It makes a great macro lens when you have to shoot from 4-6 feet away, which is not uncommon in my experience. It also seems to be built very well. I have used in on N90s, N80, F100 and F5 bodies and it works fine with all of them. My only complaint is that Sigma does not make this lens with the HSM motor.

 

Would I do it all over again. If money were not object, I would buy the Nikkor 300mm f/4 AF-S lens and the 1.4TC to get me out to 400mm. (This is my way of saying that I would buy the used Canon lens over the New Sigma for about the same money.) However, when I bought my Sigma this Nikkor lens did not exist and Nikon had no AF 400mm f/4 or f/5.6 lens in its lineup. If cost is an object, then this lens wins hands down as it is less than 1/3 the price of the Nikkor + TC combo.

I have been using the Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO lens for many years. It's extremely sharp, well built ( I haven't had the problems some owners of earlier Sigmas have had) and focuses down to 4 feet. It makes a great semi-macro lens for flowers, butterflies and other subjects about the size of a walnut. With the limiter switch set, it focuses pretty fast on the N90s. I wish it had HSM, but focusing speed is not really a problem. It's fast enough for wildlife. I had a Tokina 400mm which is smaller and lighter, but I found that I was using the Sigma more often due to its close focusing ability, so I sold the Tokina. Oh, it takes 77mm filters like the 80-200 zoom, and many other "pro" Nikon lenses.

Greetings. My introduction to medium format photography is in the

form of a Fujipet EE camera which was inherited from a relative. I

am looking for information on this camera, in particular what the EE

part of the camera does. It uses 120 roll film. There is no double

exposure prevention. I have tested the camera and it appears to

function properly with no light leaks or other problems. It is a

simple camera except that it has the old selenium photo cells on the

front and a little green needle that appears in the viewfinder. In

bright light the green needle moves back and forth to indicate, I

assume, if the available light is enough for photos. I don't know if

the camera is adjusting the shutter speed, aperture, or if the needle

is simply informative. There is no adjustment for film speed, thus I

only use negative film.

 

If anybody can share information on this camera, especially what the

EE does I would appreciate the inforamtion. The non EE model is

covered in a website article I read, but not the EE model.

I think the affordability of digital bodies is only part of the issue. The other is how people are going to store and then retrieve images over a period of many years and even decades. I know several librarians and archievists and this is a troubling problem even for the professionals. I can see Joe Photographer (obviously, not a member of this elite group) having a hard disk crash and losing a few years worth of photos. Or Joe thinks that his photos are safely archieved to a home burnt CD-ROM, only to find the the CD-ROM has a lifetime of less than seven years before deterioration sets in. Archieving the digital images will have to be very easy, the media will have to have a long life, and/or conversion to new media will have to be so easy that Joe Photographer will do it. Currently, most people find it a bother to back up their computer data on an occasional basis.

 

On the plus side for digital images is the idea of being able to make perfect copies that are easily stored off-site.

While I have not compared the F100 meter to the meter of the F5, I have compared it to the N90s and the F100 definetly handles some of the trickier exposure problems better. For example, animals with white fur were often underexposed with the N90s. The F100 gets the correct exposure. The F100 also seems to handle subjects suffering from bright side-light better than the N90s. Not that the N90s is bad, but the F100 is better.

 

If you can wait a while, I would suggest keeping you money safe and wait to see what the D2 is like. Yes, I realize nobody knows when the D2 will arrive or what it will be like. I can't help but think that my F100 may be the last film camera I buy.

The pnwphoto e-mail list is no longer located a Onelist.com. Onelist was taken over by egroups so the URL for it is now:

 

http://www.egroups.com/group/pnwphoto

 

 

Of course, egroups has been taken over by Yahoo! so the name will probably change again at some future time.

I would pick the item up and turn it over to whomever is the responsible authority. Earlier this year while hiking in Sabino Canyon (near Tucson) we lost a simple P&S camera case along with a roll of irreplacable, exposed,film that was in it. We reported it to the rangers at the visitors center. However, we figured that it probably fell down the canyon and would never be found. The next day we called and found out that a thoughtful person had found the case with the film, and turned it in. There's something nice about photographers.

On the subject of IS/VR telephoto lenses, I have to admit that if I had the extra money, when Nikon makes such a lens as I expect they will, I would purchase it in a minute. However, my biggest motion problem when shooting birds and other small animals is not camera/lens movement but subject movement. For every image I lose due to movement and vibrations of the camera/lens combo, I must lose twenty or more due to subject movement.

The Nikkor 500mm f/4 P lens is an excellent optic and about the minimum one would want for photographing birds. It is significantly lighter than the modern AF telephotos which also helps when you have to lug it about. Keep in mind that the heavier lenses also require heavier tripods and heavier ball heads. The 500mm P lens will work with the Arca B1 though the B1 is at its limit. A heavier lens requires a bigger ballhead or the Wimberly setup, both of which add weight.

 

Combined with the TC14B convertor, this lens gives outstanding results with barely any noticable degradation of the image. Combined with the TC301 the results are still very good though there is some noticable image degradation. It is certainly better than simply enlarging the image more when printing. I have also used this lens with the new Kenko 1.4x convertor. The results were good, perhaps as good as with the Nikon convertor. And the Kenko passes the electronic signals to the body so you retain features like matrix metering.

 

As far as price is concerned a used 500mm f/4 P lens is less than 1/3 the cost of a similar new AF lens from either Nikkon or Canon. For many of us it is the only way we can afford to have such a long telephoto lens. Yes, you will miss some images you could have taken with the AF lens, but you will get many, many more images that you would never have taken with a lesser lens.