etan_lightstone

Ok... How about this idea.

What if I get a huge plastic tub and fill it with rubbing alchohol. Then I keep all my camera gear (including DSLR body) submerged in it with the lid closed. No way fungus could grow then? Plus they would be totally disinfected before/after every use. When I remove the camera from the tub.. it would only take minutes to dry.

Oops... bad news I just read is that over long periods alcohol will eventually damage plastics. hrmmmm..

Basically I've left my camera in a closet in its lowepro camera bag

for about a year. Although I use it regularly, sometimes it goes a

month or two without use. (modern digital slr with a few lenses).

In the summer my apartment can get extremely humid... yet somehow I

don't see any fungus growing. I had just learned that my storage

method is the worst you can do. Anyone else store this way but came

out lucky? Since it has been stored like this.. and my place is

humid.. and it has been a year, is it practically guaranteed I'll get

fungus on my gear.. and I just can't see it yet?

Anyhow... should I just get some oversize ziplock bags to store my

gear in.. with silica gel? Then what... check the silica every day?

every week?

-I don't have time to "Bake" my gear in the sun every 3 days like some

psychos are suggesting.

-Nor do I have room or money to get a gigantic dry cabinet from some

obscure japanese manufacturer.

-where does one get a large amount of silica gel? I could rob a shoe

store.. but those packs are tiny.. I would need to steal hundreds..

plus I can't tell when they are "saturated" because they are in those

little paper pouches. :)

I also have some leica gear which is very old.. that seems to be free

of mildew... but my concerns are growing :) (that was a pun sort of)

I remember visiting the site of these two photographers who would set

up a makeshift studio (just a background and two strobes, and two

hasselblads) on a busy street corner, and would take these striking

portraits of complete strangers who they would ask as they walked by.

They did this in LA, New york, etc.. they even made a little video on

their website.

Can anyone remember who it (or they) is? I'm trying to find them.

I own the Tamron 28-75, and it is by far my favorite walk-around lens, and extremely sharp (almost as sharp as my 50mm 1.8II prime).

With that said, I find myself not using it much. It's not bad for street photos and portraits, and studio stuff, but in all honesty when I'm outdoors, or anywhere large-scale.. I end up going back to my 18-55mm ALWAYS. on a 1.6x crop, the 28-75 range isn't that usefull for dramatic shots.

Right now I'm really restling between getting the sigma 10-20 (for the awesome wide range), the Tokina 12-24 which has the best build-quality for the price), and the sigma 15mm fisheye... to get even more drama and wideness :)

And since you already have a 75-300, you can use that as a portrait lens (I usually use the 60-75 range of my tamron anyways when doing portraits). Although I'm sure your 75-300 isn't that sharp (its probably a $200 lens).

I have a 100-300 f4.5 - 6.3 "Quantaray" (about $150) which apparently is a sigma label of some kind, and I can honestly say its the worst lens I've ever owned. at 300mm it can barely focus due to the dark 6.3 wide aperture, most of the time shooting anything past its 200mm setting is pretty fuzzy. Even at 200mm if you are shooting less than f8 you are taking a big risk at having a totally blurry photo. What else, the construction is terrible, even the rear of the lens (which connects to my camera mount) is plastic, the focus motor is noisy, slow, innaccurate.

the only great thing is it is a tiny and portable lens for something that goes to 300mm. I think its much lighter than my tamron 28-75 for example.

well it looks like I'm ranting again :)

Ryan is incorrect.

The EF-S does mean that it has a smaller rear image circle and is closer to the lens, but all this does is reduce the cost and weight of the lens. It would be difficult to manufacture the same 10-20mm lens to work on a full-frame. It would cost a fortune just to correct distortion / vignetting etc..

An 18-55mm lens on an 350 / 300 / 20 D is still about 28-80mm due to sensor crop, and the 10-20 is indeed 16mm-30mm after the crop.

I guess I find the fisheye could add some "spunk" to my shots. I suppose the CHEAPEST alternate to all this is to stich several images together, but sometimes it totally doesn't work (especially indoor shots where distances really vary).

How is the Sigma 10-22 then?

In the search for more interesting wide perspective landscape (or

non-landscape) photography, I've been looking at the Sigma 15mm

fisheye to use on my Canon 300D.

At first I was looking at the Tamron 12-24 which is a good lens, then

the Sigma 10-22 which is now cheaper.

But I think artistically I could get more fun out of the Sigma 15mm

fisheye... if I get tired of the distortion, I can always fix it via

plugins no?

My question is that the new "DG" version is $70 more.. is it worth it?

They are both "EX" which I assume is good quality.

Can anyone find examples of that lens with and without the DG coating?

it's quite a price difference.

Tomorrow I'm attempting to shoot a food catalog for a company. It's

going to be a huge variety of stuff (fish, meat, dessert) all arranged

as complete meals to shoot by a food stylist.

I'm bringing two slave triggered flashes on tripods (Vivitar 285hv and

a vivitar 283). I also have an umbrella to shoot through.. in case I

need to create a soft lighting effect. This should be good enough no?

Any useful advice? I have already read some tips from the following

site:

http://www.professionalphotography101.com/photography/HowtoPhotographFood.html

It's ok, but a little light on the details. Any SPECIFIC advice ? :)

I get the same thing :(

For the past two days now

I had almost the same idea as you. I purchased the all one one set of two 500W halgens thinking it would work out for portrait lighting. It was ok....

You'd think 1000w total would be enough to give you almost daylight... but it doesn't quite cut it. Not compared to what a single low powered $60 hotshoe flash can acheive.

The both lights dead on the subject I could get maybe 1/60 , f5.6 at iso200 .. which is pretty crappy considering I'm blasting them with hot light. I tried diffusing it through some thick paper.. but it wasn't bright enough for me to shoot the subject.. Once you start getting in the shutter speed area of 1/30.. the subjects tiny movements will hurt the quality of your sharpness.

And although you could drop to f2.8... a DOF that shallow really doesn't work well for portraits.

Instead I got two vivitar flashes and an umbrella, and slave "peanuts" to trigger them from my on-camera flash. With that setup I can get f16 shots at iso100 if I wanted to!

I usually how to power the flashes down.. so I can get a nice f8 or f11

David Lau,

I finally did buy the lens used. It's odd though... When I have the camera on a tripod, and a I shot some paper with text on it at f2.8. Sometimes its soft, and sometimes its pretty sharp. I'd say it ends up being a little soft at f2.8 about 1/3 of the time.

Is this just the Autofocus innacuracy I can expect from the canon 300d?

I remember just before I bought the lens (used), I set it down. Took one shot at f2.8, it was waay off. (and this is with window light!) I set it down one more time, took the shot again, and it was spot on!

Any ideas? Sometimes I also get this with the canon 50mm f1.8. That's my only other fast lens.

hi Nadine.

How obvious is the "softness" problem in faulty lenses? Isn't it supposed to be slightly soft wide open anyways?

I have heard many good reviews about the tamron 28-75 f2.8 di lens.

My question is: I plan on ditching my canon EF-S 18-55 cheapo lens for

this one. There is no question that the quality is better... but with

a Digital Rebel ( 300D , 1.6x sensor crop), does anyone find the 28mm

limit enough for general landscape photography? The only lenses that

compare to the 18-55's range (but are superior) are out of my price

point.

Second, I found a bid on ebay, but since the guy lives in my city, I'm

buying in person. The lens is quite new. Is this a bad idea?

Anyone had bad experiences buying used lenses? It was purchased in

north america, does the Tamron 6year warranty apply to any lens? I

just ship back to tamron headquarters?

Thanks for any advice.

I recently bought an OLD (very old) vivitar 283 for my Digital Rebel.

This Vivitar was of the generation that was made in Japan.

Since I read about how this would certainly fry my camera, I just

bought a decently overpriced wein safe-sync hotshoe adapter. I tried

it in the store at it seemed to work fine with my flash and their

Digital Rebel.

But... the safe-sync specs indicate that it handles up to 400v, and

I've heard that some Vivitar 283's can have a trigger voltage as high

as 600v. Will the safe sync still work? Is my camera in danger in this

case? or the safe-sync itself is what will fail at a voltage that

high? if the safe-sync fries I don't care, if my camera does I'll be

a little upset.