michaelborger

What if someone wants a P&S that is pocketable (for daytime and/or random fun shooting as opposed to my D70) AND can be put in an underwater housing for scuba diving? Is the 1100SD or the A series still recommended? I dive down to about 100ft sometimes. I'm interested in everything in this thread but if a model can't be put in a housing then I'd have to consider something else.

Aloha from Honolulu, everyone! I had an Olympus Stylus 410 and an underwater housing that I used on various

scuba trips and continued to use when I moved here to Hawaii a couple years ago. Last year in Thailand that

housing flooded(!) and the Stylus is no more. The housing is fine - I just didn't seal it properly (and promptly

lost what would have been great shark images).

 

So now I'd like to replace it, but I have two needs:

 

1. Get another underwater solution, preferably one that uses the same housing to save on $. I dive here to

roughly 100ft at max depth.

 

2. Have something that I can slip into my pocket for nights on the town, something that doesn't bulge out like a

fat wallet.

 

Yup, I'm well aware that this probably requires two separate cameras unless there is a slim-form camera that can

also be used underwater to depth with a relatively inexpensive housing (I can hock the old housing if it makes

sense). What I'd like to do, then, is reduce the overall expenditure. As my main camera is a D70 and I'm a

student(!), cost is a factor for secondary cameras.

 

So any thoughts? Since I've been married to my D70 for the past three years, I haven't kept up with the latest

offerings. I'd appreciate any recommendations.

 

Thanks,

Mike

Hello everyone. I've uploaded new China photos to my site, www.mikeseyes.com

 

The site itself will be going through a re-design soon, but the photos will

stay. Please feel free to leave comments. This is an art/hobby/skill I've

been working on while I put myself through grad school. :) Thank you.

 

Mike<div></div>

Many thanks to all the posters for their very informative responses (except the last one who was apparently born a pro). I try not to completely rely on the zoom for framing and get in closer to the subject when I can, but I know I have a learning curve ahead of me and need to experiment more with different DOFs. I'll check out the Learn section on here as well.

 

The lens sounds great, and I prefer low light conditons (storms, partcularly) and narrow DOF, so I'll check it out. Having a hard time finding one for the $100 or so I hear it goes for, but I'm going to keep digging around and add it to my collection to give me something else to practice with. I don't know if I'll get one in time for China, but if I don't then the 18-70 will have to suffice like it did well last year (www.mikeseyes.com).

 

Again, many thanks.

This is a beginner question, but I see so many people recommending I

get a 50mm 1.8 lens. I know it's supposed to be light and only

around $100, but why the insistence on this? Is it the wide open

aperture? How much of a difference in image quality would a lens

like this make over my kit 18-70mm lens at the same focal length at

a slightly different f-stop?

 

Obviously to me, the main drawback is that you actually have to move

in closer or step away from the subject to compose - no zooming. I

imagine this makes composing your image quite difficult.

 

Thoughts? I'm off to NW China soon for a month and don't want to

carry too much stuff, but I'm considering getting a lens like this.

Thanks for all the advice so far. Douglas, that Velbon looks very interesting. The one thing I'm wondering, though, and this goes for everyone as a general tripod question, is this: how much shorter than the user can a tripod be before it is generally uncomfortable? I'm 5'7" and that Velbon has a max height of 50" (4'2"). Is that generally considered too much of a difference? Yesterday morning at the DC cherry blossoms was my first time really using a tripod, so it's hard to say after one time how much it would bother me over much more use or over a long vacation.

 

Thoughts?

Hi all. Has anyone found a good travel tripod? I'm off to NW China

or Tibet for a month and would like to give a go of taking a tripod

with me on my adventures. It has to be light, small and compactable

as I'll be backpacking. Or something of the sort. Any

recommendations? Thanks.

Thanks to all the great feedback so far. I read on dpreview.com the following about the Sigma 10-20:

 

"The second of three DC (digital SLR only) lenses announced by Sigma today is the 10 - 20 mm F4.0 - F5.6 EX DC HSM, an interesting super wide-angle lens which would provide 15 - 30 mm equiv. on a 1.5 FOV crop camera (such as the Nikon D70)."

 

Since the standard lens kit I got with the D70 is 18-70mm (27-105 35mm equivalent), a 15-30mm equivalent as stated is not really adding anything to my capabilities. Do I understand this correctly?

Well I've been enjoying my Nikon D70 for almost a year now. It's

great. I got the standard 18-70mm lens kit and took it to China.

Now that I'm headed back there this summer for another month, I want

to add another lens. I'm still deciding what region I want to hit,

but there is a good chance that I'll be in the NW provinces

(Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, etc.) where you often

have wide, sweeping landscapes. That being said, it seems that a

wide-angle lens would fit the bill better than going in the opposite

direction with a telephoto. Of course, a telephoto would be nice as

well as I live in a city (DC) where a longer focal length would seem

to generally present better photo ops, but I'm a light and rugged

traveler (re: backpacker) and don't want to spend my days lugging

around multiple lenses beyond what's necessary.

 

So, as shopping for a lens is a new world for me and I don't know

what to look for, I'm hoping the community here can give me some

advice. I don't want to pay for what I don't need (or already have,

re: overlap) and don't know what specifications to look for beyond

focal length. I also don't know how short a focal length would be

overkill as I've no experience beyond the 18mm range on the lens I

have now. I'm not partial to Nikon lenses, either, if a 3rd party

makes a quality alternative -- budget is a consideration.

 

So any advice as I start to build my lens collection? Thanks!

Thank you to everyone for their input.

Why do you make your image size smaller than the paper so there's a border? The way I view the final product, the mat is the border. I think it would look odd to have, going inside out, the image, then white space, then mat, then frame. The white space + mat seems like it would look strange to me. Better, I guess, to just do some custom framing. I'll pick up a tool.

Starting a workflow. All my Nikon D70 images are JPG at 3000x2008

pixels. However, now that I have them online and people want to buy

them, I'm having trouble converting some of them to common printable

sizes like 8x10 or 11x14. The way I see it, my options are limited

to this:

 

1. Crop to one size and that's the size available. Or to a size

from which multiple sizes are available.

** PROBLEM: Some of my images fill the complete width in landscape,

so cropping doesn't help.

 

2. Use Image Size to force the image to a certain size.

*** PROBLEM: Doing this distorts the image. Tolerable to a degree,

depending on the image

 

3. Increase the canvas size in one direction and fill in the space

with a solid color.

*** PROBLEM: This only works for images where the background is

relatively solid or the filled in extra space creates a seamless

transition with the original image. It also makes the image

too 'weighted' toward the new extra space.

 

Here is an example. Two pink lotus candles against a black

background. There's not much room to crop horizontally and a fixed

marquee at 8x10 chops off the candles. Some photos in my gallery

aren't fortunate enough to have a solid black background to play

with, so the problem is even worse.

 

http://mikeseyes.smugmug.com/gallery/567714/2/23674500 (two candles)

http://mikeseyes.smugmug.com/gallery/567836/1/23679158 (waterfall;

2nd row, first photo)

 

Are there any other options? If not, does this mean that when I take

photos that I want to print at 8x10, for example, I can't be filling

the whole viewfinder with my subject b/c I'll have this issue every

time? I'm quite dismayed/frustrated.

 

I know this is something many people have handled, so any advice is

appreciated.

Thanks for the kind words. Hmmm, I thought I had a few not-so-obvious shots, especially with the people and kids, but I know what you mean. Of course, I was a tourist so I have some of the 'postcard' shots, too. I need to separate out my 'portfolio' shots from what I have up there for friends and family. But point taken and I'll work on that next time!

 

Yes, I LOVE the D70! It's my first SLR, digital or film. Like I said, I'm new to real photography (beyond P&S), so my learning curve is taking a major turn with my new toy.

I was just at all those places in April. The only real sense of nature I had was in the parks, mostly Beijing. Try Jingshan and especially Behai Park, both right next to the Forbidden City. I did see some birds, chipmunks and other little critters around the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and such, but nothing that really 'wowed' me. If you want some nice photos of the Great Wall, skip the Badaling section and go out to Jinshalin - Simatai. Much fewer people and none of those terribly annoying stops at gift shops! Argh! If it's real nature photography you want, you'll have to get out of the major cities. Sichuan and Yunnan are fantastic, but the BEST photography in China is the PEOPLE, especially the children.

 

My China photos can be found at www.mikeseyes.com

Hi, thanks for the reply. Yes, I know I need to cut down :), but where to start? I'll probably knock off another 100 or so and then make a "Best of" gallery so people can just focus on those. I just have so many shots, especially of people, that I'd hate to cut. I was there for an entire month and came home with 1300! I guess I need to decide what I'm really doing it for and go from there. It's partially for my personal photography development, and partially for friends and family, which is why I have the photos with me up there also (but purposefully separate).

 

But thank you very much for saying they make you want to go to China. I take that is a very nice compliment. It really is a fantastic place.

Hi. I hope shameless plugs aren't too frowned on here, but I'm new

to photo.net. For that matter, I'm relatively new to photography and

could use some advice. I splurged on a D70 before I went off to

China backpacking solo for the whole month of April. I just put up

my photos on www.mikeseyes.com. Some are keepers while others

are 'regular joe' shots. Perhaps I'll add a 'Best of' gallery. I'm

going to weed out a bit of them and finish putting up the

descriptions. I'm also going to constantly improve the photos that

are there. I got some good recommendations from my local store in DC

yesterday.

 

I'm really posting this because I'd appreciate any feedback from my

fellow enthusiasts since I'd like to improve. I'm kind of teaching

myself right now, learning the ropes as I go along. I did put every

photo through PS, but I need to learn a lot more about color

management, lighting, etc. I've had lots of hits on the site but no

recommendations. I hope this comes across in my photos, but the best

thing about China is not the food, not the Great Wall or the pandas,

but the people. The kid photos are my favorites. Please enjoy!

 

www.mikeseyes.com<div></div>

I just spent a month there in April with my new D70. I was backpacking solo through Beijing, Ping Yao, Xi'an, Chengdu, Jiuzhaigou, Li Jiang, Huang Shan and Shanghai. I never had problems and often walked around with my camera exposed, but I always had the strap over my opposite shoulder so that no one could have ripped it away from me. However, I never felt threatened and had such a great relationship with all the people I came across. I'm also a seasoned traveler and know how to walk with a sense of purpose and confidence (even when I'm lacking it). You can check out my photos at www.mikeseyes.com - just up today!