sacbee

Hello people,

I finally decided to buy a macro lens for my EOS system. But making choice is a

difficult task and I need ur help. I have the following list:

Sigma 150mm F2.8 APO DG EX HSM

Sigma 180mm F3.5 EX APO Macro IF

Sigma 105 F2.8 EX Macro 1:1

Canon EF 100mm F2.8 Macro USM.

I've read reviews about these lenses at fred miranda and other websites and as

per that Sigma 150mm and Canon 100mm are the better among others. But I want

your personal opinons (whoever has used any of these lenses.

I also wanted to know what are the differences, apart from distance from subject

, in using 100+mm macro lens and 28 or 50mm macro lenses. Is there any advantage

in using 28 or 50mm macro lenses?

Thanks in advance for all your replies.

cheers,

Sachin

For those who travel to India and want to do something more than those typical

photography of Rajasthan deserts, Delhi monuments, Kerala backwaters and

Tamilnadu Temples here is my recommendation.

The name of the place is Thirthahalli. Its in the southern state of Karnataka,

around 300Km from Bangalore. Its a taluk headquarter and is a part of Shimoga

district. This place has a very thick forest cover and is abode of plethora of

snakes, butterflies, insects and other wild animals. There are extremely

beautiful landscapes, rivers and mountains all around. Its also very close to

the famous Agumbe, which receives the second highest rainfall in the country.

I didnt have the right equipment. A true macro, an extreme wide angle and a

decent telephoto lenses are a must to visit this place. I managed it with a 50mm

prime and a cheap 75-300mm Canon lenses. I had just three days of time to spend

in this place and here is what I got.

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=612374

cheers,

Sachin

Dear all,

I myself had given the same suggestion sometime back but nothing has been

done. Today I had to upload more than 100 photos and I had to rename all the

photographs twice - once during editing and saving and once during uploading it

to PN. This is really a pain in the arse. I rename my photos just because I

dont want them to have a tag "Untitled" in PN.

Why dont you concerned website guys please make the Caption and file name the

same "BY DEFAULT". I'm not asking to remove the caption field itself, I'm just

asking you to make it same as file name. If need arises the photographer will

change the caption.

Hope this change will be done in the near future to save most of our's time

cheers,

Sachin

Hello all,

1. I wanted to know where I can get the required materials like

cleaning swabs, liquid etc. in China, particularly in Shanghai. Also

is there any website who can take my order and deliver it to Shanghai.

2. My CMOS is utterly dirtied. You can observed spots without even

magnifing the image. All my sky/sunset/clouds shots during recent

trip are screwed up. So as a quick solution can I use bulb-blower?

Will it reduce the dust to some extent atleast?

Thanks,

Sachin

Hi Rainer,

Thanks for your response. Yes! before the failure of the mircrodrive, it was working well with the reader, I used to transfer my pictures using the same reader. Well now I've fixed the problem and would like to share some of the misconceptions I had and what I learnt with others.

1. In most cases when a microdrive gets corrupted, it is not really damaged. Its just that its file system gets concked up. A format will solve the problem.

2. But formatting "MAY" destroy the photographs. So its better you use "Photorescue" (perhaps a very reliable tool with an easy interface) to backup your photographs. I tried someother tools also, but nothing comes close to this one. The best part is you can see the thumbnails of your pictues when its recovering, this kind of builds up your confidence that you can recover your pictures.

3. Remember: You need to have a full version for saving the pictures, demo version just displays the thumbnails. ("PC Inspector smart recovery" couldnt recover any of my RAW files). One more thing I observed when recovering pictures was that the photorescue tool could even recover some pictures which I had taken long time ago and I had formatted the card before. Thats the reason I had enclosed MAY within quotes in point 2.

4. Once the photographs are transferred, shove the mircodrive in the camera's slot and format it. I had thought that camera can never access the microdrive, but thats not the case, it can recognize the file system, but it can format the drive. So formatting should fix the problem and get the smile back on your face.

5. You'll learn something when bad things strikes you.

cheers,

Sachin

Bad time stikes everybody, this time it was my turn. Suddenly my 2 GB

Hitachi microdrive stopped responding and my 20D LCD was blinking with

"CF Error". Worse part was this happened after 2 days of photographing

during my vacation. My obvious question is how on earth I can get

back my images? Even my card reader (Lexar) is unable to read the

card. I'm keeping my fingers crossed with the ache in the heart for

your responses. Is there any way I can get them back?

My next question is "Which one to buy next?". Now I've realized the 2

1gig cards are better than 1 2gig card. But which one is more

reliable and fast?

Hi Frank,

My intention was not to flood the forum. Recently I explored this forum and saw a couple of posts wherein they had posted their photographs of travel. I just thought of sharing some of mine here since it was a relevant forum. By the way your post didnt answer my question.

cheers,

Sachin

Hi Lalith,

Brahmagiri is very close to Coorg. It is around 4 - 5 hours journey from Bangalore. We have go via Mysore I guess. The hiking starts from Irpu, a small village which has a Irpu water fall too, but dont stop at the water fall when u're starting the hike, you can keep it for the return journey. After trekking for nearly 4 hours, you end up in Narimale forest guest house which has a watersource nearby. So you can take rest, cook something if you want and then continue to Brahmagiri which is another 3 hours trek. But I would recommend you to trek Brahmagiri on the second day. First day you can visit "Pakshi patala" a very scenic spot with many rocks. Second day you start early, trek Brahmagiri. The last strech is pretty steep, but for that its a cool trek. We spotted Sambar, Indian gaur and wild elephants, unfortunately I had my KM DImage Z1 which couldnt catpure them well. On the way back take a shower at Irpu waterfall and start ur return journey.

cheers,

Sachin

Brahmagiri, the tallest peak which separates the south Indian states

of Karnataka and Kerala. Half day trekking is all you need to reach

this magnificient peak, which is full of vivid flora and fauna. Here

are the photographs:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=591106

cheers,

Sachin

Yedakumeri, is a deserted railway station in the south Indian state of

Karnataka. Its located amidst thick forest and the trekkers need to

walk on the sleepers of the railway track for about 18Km to reach this

station. The scene is very picturesque with lot of small water falls,

rivers, valleys and greenery. Here are the photographs:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=591099

cheers,

Sachin

Kemmangundi is a famous hill station in the south Indian state of

Karnataka. Kemmangundi means a valley of red soil. It was earlier a

iron ore mining center, but now the mines have been closed. It has a

very famous waterfall called "Hebbe" falls amdist the forest. Its,

heaven for trekkers.

Here are the photographs:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=591067

cheers,

Sachin

Agumbe is a small village in the south Indian state of Karnataka. Its

known for its natural beauty, water resource and it receives the

second highest rainfall in India. Here are the photographs of that

wonderful village:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=582204

cheers,

Sachin

Here are the photographs of Beijing, the heritage city of China:

Day1: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=575305

Day2: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=575304

Day3: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=575303

Day4: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=575299

Comments are welcome.

cheers,

Sachin

Photographs of Yangzhou, China.

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=590404

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

cheers,

Sachin

Photographs of Hangzhou, China.

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=592874

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

cheers,

Sachin

Here are the photographs of my spring vacation holidays in Fenghuang,

China. The place is located in the Hunan province and very laid back,

scenic spot. Different from most of the places I've been to in China.

Your comments will be encouraging.

Day 1 - http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=569572

Day 2 - http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=569579

Day 3 - http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=569933

Cheers,

Sachin

I've written some travel articles and would like to publish in on PN's

travel section. What should I do?

cheers,

Sachin

Thanks Peter. I downloaded v2.4 but still no luck. It couldnt open the RAW file shot by my 20D (*.CR2)

cheers,

Sachin

Dear all,

Does the PS CS (not CS2) support RAW. I tried downloading RAW 3.3

from adobe website but looks like its only for PS CS2. Is there

anyway I can open my RAW in PS CS. Thanks in advance.

cheers,

Sachin

I would not suggest EXIF because the intention of the upload tool is for bulk uploading where the only parameters which could remain same (its less probable that u upload photographs shot with different cameras/lens in one shot) are camera/lens.

If EXIF is provided, then bulk uploading does not have any meaning. It can be left to the photographer to fill-in the exif later, I guess.

What do u guys feel?

cheers,

Sachin

I appreciate the upload tool which was introduced some weeks ago, but

now I feel its the time to make some improvements.

1. I rename my photographs and select them for upload, I've to again

key-in the title of the shot, most of the times which is same as the

file name. Instead I feel its better if the title is by default same

as the name of the file. If need arises then we can rename it.

Because of this inconvenience, I've seen many photos on the website

with title "untitled".

2. It does not allow to delete one particular photo once I've selected

to upload which is really painful. If I decide not to upload one

photograph after selecting it, then I either have to upload it and

delete it or I've clear all the files and again select which is really

annoying.

3. You can give some more basic fields like camera/lens selection in

the upload tool. We can find so many photographs (including mine)

without any information on the equipment used.

I think many other members would have also felt the same when

uploading. Please share your views.

Cheers,

Sachin

Hello all,

I'm unable to open the RAW files in photoshop shot with my 20D.

Photoshop says that the file is not recognized. I used card reader to

transfer the files.

How can I solve this problem?

Thanks,

Sachin

Greetings,

I've lost my EOS20D software CD, is there any link where I can

download the EVU? Or it would be great if someone can zip it up and

upload it on some server passing on the link to me.

Thanks a lot,

Sachin