plasma181

Jesse: At what resolution can the scanners at WalMart scan a 35mm frame? When I ask that question at the WalMart up the street, the only answer I get is "What's resolution?".

Bill: How do you think the 400 UC would stack up against the High Definition 400 or Portra 400 VC? I think I read somewhere that the 400 UC is the same as Portra 400 UC.

I strongly considered a used FA before I bought my FM3a. The main reason was that the FA has shutter priority while very few other manual focus Nikons do. When I got the opportunity to get an FM3a, brand spanking new for half price, that pretty much decided it for me.

Here is a shot I took at my family reunion in Pennsylvania last year. Nikon FM3a, 50mm Series E lens. Studio 35 film from Walgreens. It's actually Agfa Vista. Can't recall the speed. We were in the shade of some tall overhanging trees.<div></div>

Walgreens also sells Agfa Vista under the "Studio 35" label. But I hear Agfa went bankrupt, so I don't know what they will do now.

CVS gives me 1500 x 1000 pixel scans; Walgreens gives me 1800 x 1200. When I ask for a higher resolution scan, I have to spend 5 minutes explaining the term "resolution". Then they tell me that can't do it anyway. I refuse to take my film to WalMart as they have screwed up my negatives in the past.

I own the manual focus version of this lens, and I have not noticed this problem. Though to be fair, I haven't looked for it. Usually, this lens takes a very nice picture.

I don't really see a big difference here in this situation. Though perhaps with a long telephoto or extreme macro, I might see an improvement.

Now let's look at an enlargement below. It's the same as above; no mirror lockup on left; with mirror lockup on right.

I conducted a test of the mirror slap characteristics of my FM3a and

the improvement seen using the mirror lockup feature. Of course, on

this model, the mirror locks up using the self timer.

Here is one of the pictures. Taken with my FM3a on a tripod with a

50mm Series E lens and cable release. 1/8 second at f2.8. Image on

the left is with no mirror lockup; image on right is with lockup.<div></div>

When shooting in vertical format, you can hide one eye behind the camera and leave both of them open.

Well I've done some checking, and it turns out my browser is compressing all my images, just not as badly as this one. When I go directly to Internet Explorer, with AOL still running, I am able to click "LARGER" and see the original image. The image that first pops up is still heavily compressed.

I have used the browser at work, and one at the gym, and I can conclude it is not Photo.net. My computer is severely compressing this image for some reason, and only this image. I have AOL, but I'm not sure why something would happen to only one image.

Well, I had some interesting results. My original image on my hard drive is 750 x 497 pixels at 96.8 KB. When I download the "LARGER" image is is 750 x 497 pixels, but only 7.05 KB. So it is compressed almost 14 times as much as the original image. This accounts for the severe degradation. My other images are not compressed nearly this much. I have no idea what is so different about this particular picture.

That's what I read, but not what I see. The image I see with the "LARGER" button is more degraded than what is on my hard drive. Check out http://www.photo.net/photo/3343800 and see if the LARGER image is better.

It seems that images I upload appear to degrade from what is on my

hard drive. I see severe JPG compression artifacts that are not on

the originals. When I click on the "LARGER" button, I simply get a

larger degraded image. Has anyone else had this happen? Is there a

way to work around this?

Ka-Ho:

Also, you might want to consider an FM3a for around $600. It's manual focus, and doesn't have a lot of the features of the 5, 6 and 100, but it's a great picture taking machine.

Thanks for the input. I had read that these zooms were pretty soft at full aperture. But it looks like I might go for the 2.8 Tamron. If it's good full open, great, if not I can stop it down some.

Would it be possible to shoot as to make the main subject sharp, then smooth out the "bokeh" or whatever it is, in Photoshop?

I currently have a 35-105 mm f 3.5-4.5 nikkor as a general purpose

zoom. Though it's a nice lens, the problem is I'm starting to do

hand-held meter work, and the variable aperture complicates things.

Has anyone heard of a zoom at about the 28-105 or 35-105 range that

is constant aperture? I know Tamron makes an f2.8, but I'd probably

never use a zoom at 2.8, so I'd settle for something at around f4 or

so. Thanks.

I meant to say "Few of my shots", not "Few many". Sorry about that.

I have never gotten too wrapped up in ratings. Few many of my pictures have an average rating higher than a 4, but lots of my shots are sitting in frames in people's houses. That's the only rating that matters.

On the FM3a, the manual dial and the needle only go to 1 second. But the aperture priority goes well past that. You can set it on a tripod, set the dial to "A", and the timer will go well past 1 second. I have read 8 seconds, I have read 30 seconds, I have read 1/2 hour. Nobody seems to know exactly, but you can shoot much longer than 1 second.

I just got back from a trip to Aruba. I didn't want to get sand and seaweed on my FM3a, so I brought my FM10 I got off eBay. What I found was that in the very bright sunlight, with sunglasses on, it is not very easy to see those LEDs. I suspect the match needles would have been easier in that situation.

One more thing you might find useful. The manual states that the p30t has a sync speed of 1/100 sec. It actually goes up to 1/125 sec without a problem.