david_ceruti

<p>Hi there<br>

I have been given a Canovision EX1 with a CL 8-120 lens. I know that it is useless for a SLR, but I thought it may be fun to make a bracket and use it on my cell phone camera.<br>

However, when I take the lens off and look through it, there is no light coming through - is the aperture closed when the lens off? Or is it some video thing that I'm ignorant of?<br>

Any advice will be great<br>

David</p>

<p>I am having trouble triggering my trusty old Elinchrom 22 - one of the old ones with the proprietary screw on slave socket. O bought one of the Phottix Strato 2 wireless triggers and can’t get it to work. After fiddling around with a multimeter it seems that the Phottix triggers use and electrical pulse to trigger the light where the Elinchrom just need the circuit to be closed.<br>

Two questions: Is my assessment of the problem correct and is there a workaround?<br>

Thanks in advance</p>

<p>Thanks guys, you are the best.<br>

Watch this space for some great pictures around the end of May</p>

<p>Good day all and (somewhat belated) best wishes for 2010.<br>

One of my students is off to the Himalayas next month to climb up to base camp one. He has a 50D and would like to know what lens he should take with. Obviously the first and most important priority is reliability, followed by convenience - light weight and preferably one, maximum two lenses. Lastly there is the image quality consideration.<br>

The convenience and image quality aspects are a difficult trade-off.<br>

So, we are calling on the vast experience of all the photo.net community for advice<br>

Keep well all<br>

David</p>

<p>On my Canon 40D I have noticed that the burst in continuous shooting is reduced to 7 or 8 when high ISO noise reduction is turned on. This is also the case with a few other Canon models<br>

Because I teach photography, I wonder if this also happens with other makes and models of cameras. Any information would be very helpful<br>

Have a fantastic 2010 everyone and I hope to see some of you here in South Africa for the World Cup<br>

David Ceruti</p>

One of my students has a Coolpix 5700 and after changing some settings (he can't remember which ones) the camera

has a few swconds delay between photos. He takes one pic and then the shutter button and screen freezes for a

while before he can take another pic. I went through all the settings that I thought could cause the problem,

like noise reduction, etc. but couldn't improve it.

Any suggestions anyone

Thanks

David

Thanks for the comments

Rene, I can understand that it will be slow when I first load the folder but how do I get the magnifier to draw

faster? It takse a significant amount of time even moving around within one photo

Thank you in advance

David

I have recently made the move to CS3 and notice that when I scroll through pics in bridge or when I use the

magnifier feature on the filmstrip view, the pics start as low resolution. pixilated images and increase the

resolution untill they are sharp. The time this takes adds up to a significant delay when going through a lot of

images.

The question is - to speed this up do I add more ram (I have 2 GB at the moment - and would have to change my

motherboard to add more) or plug in a better graphics card (I'm using a Nvidea GeForce 7300 GT) or a faster CPU

(have a 3.2 gHz Intell)?

Or is there something else I am missing?

Thanks

David

Thanks a lot guys - now to go and splash out

:-)

I am adding another hard drive to my machine - a 320mhz dual core with 2 gigs of

RAM (it looks as if this is the max that my motherboard can take). I am looking at

a 500 gig SATA drive.

Is it worth the extra money to get a hard drive with a large cache? I have drives

with 8, 16 and 32 Mb cache to choose from, all running at 7,200rpm.

Alternatively, should I go for a 10,000 rpm drive?

Thanks

David

Alistair

Thanks for the working link (how did you do it? - it was the first link I posted and I would like to do it correctly in the future)

The reason I want to try this myself is that I have a grey import and don't want to go through all the hassle of fighting with Canon. so any comments/suggestions are welcome

Regards

David

I asked a few days ago about calibrating a lens and was referred

here:

http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.astrosurf.org%

2Fbuil%2Fautofocus%2Fadjust.htm&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

Browsing the site it seems that these guys are quite serious

astronomy photographers so I think the suggestion may be doable.

Has anyone tried this with a 20D? What do you think about the

procedure in general?

Thanks in advance for your advice - I am keen to try it out but

don't want to take a stupid risk

Regards

David

Many comments already but I have 2 cents to add.

What REALLY annoys me is that, even if you have bought at home you still get treated like sh*t when you try to get a warranty or repair. This in South Africa where the prices are on average twice the USA prices. Typically monopolistic behaviour!

Canon needs to update their business model. The world is changing - the internet is making price comparisons easier and easier and individuals can now easily purchase internationally. The trend is to reduce barriers to international trade, not increase them (Doha notwithstanding).

If there is a problem with costing international warranties, then it isn't that difficult for Canon to introduce internal cost transfer measures. So if a camera purchased in Hong Kong is repaired under warranty in the USA then canon USA could claim the cost from Canon Hong Kong. this would affect the cost in Canon Hong Kong. these economic pressures would tend to equalise prices and would open the restricted markets up to competition and force them to lower prices.

Of course, there is enormous inertia in all large companies so they will only move if they have to.

Which means if we, the consumers, put up with this Canon will carry on doing it. I we get p*ssed enough to make a fuss they will change.

So - either we live with it or start complaining. The more people complain, the sooner things will change.

I agree with Gampi. I get the settings in Av mode, use the settings on manual (with some tweaking) and then set the flash to underexpose 2/3 stops, shoot a test shot, check the histogram and then go for it. I also used this method when shooting a rock concert but set the flash minus 1 - 3 stops and got great atmosphere from the stage lights and fog while getting nice detail on the performers

Good luck!

My 50mm f1.8 is front focussing quite badly and a phone call to the

local Canon agents here in South Africa got me through to a

particularly surly and unhelpful technician that gave me a price

estimate only a little more than I bought the lens for.

So I am thinking �stuff you�, I�ll do it myself!

Is this possible? I am hoping that there is an adjustment screw

somewhere and that one of you can give me some advice or point me to

a web site.

Thanks and a great 2006 to you all

David

2 cents worth to add to the already comprehensive answers:

I did similar ruler tests when I first got my 20D and found quite a large difference between my lenses, with the 50mm f1.8 front focussing by 2-3cm, which I am compensating for until I get around to sending it in for calibration. Not a huge problem because for most of the portrait work I do the 50mm is already too sharp for the ladies

So you have something else to worry about now.

David

Robin

Great comprehensive answer! One of the reasons I spend so much time on this site

Thanks

David Ceruti

Thanks a lot guys!

David

Could someone help please.

A friend of mine was given an old 155A Speedlite, without a manual

of course. There are two switches on the back of the flash ? an

on/off switch and a 3 way switch on the left. Can anyone tell us

what the three positions of the left hand switch are for?

Thanks in advance

David

I recently borrowed a friends D70 after having quite a bit of film

experience and was suprised at the amount of exposure compensation I

had to use, sometimes up to 6 stops.

I was shooting architecture and a lot of the shots were indoors (on

ISO 800) so there was a not much variation in the lighting. I also

had the same experience with outdoor shots on ISO 200.

My questions are:

Is this normal on a D70?

Is there something about shooting digital that makes this more

common?

I don't think my technique was too off as I have used the same

approach - setting aperture priority and letting the camera set the

shutter speed - and I got good results on film.

This may be a dumb question and I couldn't find anything on a search

so I apologise in advance (no flames please)

David

Not an answer but another question.

Has anyone had experience with these Russion telephoto mirror lenses? I see that they have 1000mm lenses advertised on the site. I know about the general problems related to mirror lenses but this may be a way to get a Loooong lens if the quality is useable.

David

I would appreciate if someone can help me through the arcana of

slave flashes and TTL metering.

I have a 20D and 580EX on the way. I also have a couple of flashes ?

a Sunpak hammerhead and an old Cobra. I am hoping to be able to use

them as slaves.

Now the question ? if I get a radio trigger for these, how will the

580 handle the TTL? I was planning to use the slaves to fill in

areas and to put the Sunpak into manual mode ? will the 580 adjust

its output to allow for the extra light or will it just go from the

metering it reading worked out from the preflash?

Also, the Cobra has no settings and I assume it will just shoot at

full power ? I will play around with this (how I am looking forward

to the instant feedback from a digital!) but if anyone has any tips

so I can interpret the results intelligently.

Lastly, any recommendations for a reasonably inexpensive slave kit

to trigger these flashes?

Apologies for the long post and thanks in advance

David

Thanks! - you guys are great

David

I have recently started out in the darkroom and am on a steep

learning curve.

One of the frustrating things is trying to get an accurate reading

from the temperature/development time chart. Hasn't anyone put this

on a spreadsheet yet? Ilford hasn't and a search of the web revealed

nothing.

I know that I need to spend time and learn what works for me, so I

am calibrating my camera and processing times and keeping detailed

records. I guess it irritates me to mess around with a tiny chart

that doesn't even show half minutes and is almost impossible to use

for longer exposure times. A simple spreadsheet could give detailed

tables and calculate accurate times so that I would be in the

ballpark and not make unecessary mistakes before I start trying out

different times.

Excuse the mini rant - I am probably going to sit down and develop

the spreadsheet myself but don't want to reinvent the wheel

(assuming someone has already done so)

Thanks

David

Thanks a lot guys

In response to Chris, I set up the studio flash using a flash meter over the area that the subject is sitting in (because I am on a bit of a budget I have only got the one). I was taking shots from various angles and hoped that with the Sunpak, I would even out the light from the studio flash but some shots were under-, others overexposed.

I was worried that if I set the Sunpak on the camera to TTL, then the camera would try to regulate the light by shutting this flash off but the much bigger flash, which is not controlled by the TTL meter would blow everything out.

I must admit that the more I think about this the more confused I become. Maybe I need to spend the weekend shooting a few rolls testing all the settings.

Thanks again for all the advice

David