mike_earussi1

The vast majority of photographers that I know who shoot 6x9 use the Mamiya Press. It's the most economical and convenient system around, the Fuji is lighter but more expensive and the lenses are not suppose to be as good as as the newer fixed Fujis and and the Mamiya is faster to use than the Graflex, though the Graflex is certainly the most versital and is also inexpensive.

Doing color printing on a computer yourself tends to be more pricey (considering the cost of both ink and photo paper)than going to walmart but can be more satifying to the kids if you have a simple photo editing program (and of course access to computers)which they would probable get a real kick out of using. Digital would be great as the cost of film and processing would soon eat up your $850.

Be careful about buying an IS lens. Once you get use to one you never want to shoot with anything else again.

Original Pentax 645s are amazingly inexpensive on the market now and have excellent metering and a right angled view finder can be bought for it which can give you waist level viewing.

Get the platform you are use to. My friend has a G5 with 2.5 Gb ram but I find it very hard to use because I'm too use to XP whereas he finds XP confusing. I prefer PCs because I can configure them the way I want to, something harder to do on a mac. I would suggest that you go to a good computer shop, tell them what you want (you can specify top quality components or raid 0 for instance) and then let them build one up just for you. It's usually cheaper than buying someone elses "superblitz" computer which usually is more expensive and quite often uses second quality components to inflate their profits.

I guess I'll put my 2 cents worth in. Having done a lot of indoor available light photography (I hate the look of camera mounted flash) I found the 28-135 IS invaluable. True it is only f5.6 at the 135 end but the IS more than made up for the lack of a wider aperture. And I only shoot 800 neg. film indoors, if you're not planning on making big prints it works fine. Obviously the ideal lens would be the 70-200 L IS but it is a tad pricey.

When I was shooting 4x5 w/sinar F1 I found that I was able to use one of Bogens smaller normal tripods the 3001. View cameras don't vibrate much when shooting with a standard leaf shutter type lens so you don't need the mass for damping that you do with medium format focal plane shutters. Also I don't like to carry any more weight that necessary when packing gear around plus I didn't have a lot of money for carbon fiber tripods so I tried the 3001 and found that it worked. It just isn't very good for windy situations, then you need a heavier tripod.

Canon lenses tend to autofocus faster and more accurately on canon bodies than 2nd party lenses, at least that has been my experience.

Don't try to mask the 4x5 carrier for 6x7. Unless you can be sure that you have the 6x7 perfectlly centered in the carrier the 80mm lens will not cover the edges properly. You're pushing the 80mm for coverage as it is without adding improper centering to the mix.

Flash only reaches a short distance and then falls off rapidly (doubling the distance decreases the light by 4x). In a studio type environment where everything is close this doesn't matter much especially if all of the light is coming from the flash but outdoors in the daytime where you have a lot of ambient light an exposure slower (longer) than the flash sync can overexpose the subject and produce a ghosting effect from subject movement. It can also be used to vary the background illumination as standard exposure rules still apply to anything beyond the reach of the flash. Setting the shutter to a speed faster than the flash sync will result in a partially exposed frame if you have a focal plane shutter (this is why many portrait photographers tend to have leaf shutter lenses as they will sync at all speeds giving them greater control over foreground vs background illumination).

A lot of landscape photographers use adjustable (rectangular colored plastic filters in a holder that screws onto the lens and allows the filter to slide) graduated neutral density filters in varying strengths for sunset type pictures that fit the Cokin P holder system, though they don't use the cokin brand grad nd filters themselves as they are not very good (they tend to have a strong magenta cast). Hi-tec brand grad nd (soft edge) filters are what most photographers use and are fairly inexpensive and actually neutral and can be bought in the cokin P size.

I have a friend who still shoots old chrome film that has been frozen for over 20 years (he bought a lot of it--and then froze it--at a good price from a camera store that went out of business) and it still looks good. It just depends upon how the film was stored.

Having owned the pentax 67 (and 645) for a number of years with the same basic tripod/head combination that you have I have found that nothing will keep the shutter (not the mirror) from kicking except draping a weight across the top of the pentaprism (I use my camera bag full of heavy 67 lenses--about 10 lbs.) especially at 1/30 sec. and slower, though for really long bulb exposures of over 5 seconds the kick becomes such a small part of the overall exposure that you no longer need it. The only problem that I have had with this technique was that the tripod head would usually slip a little from the weight so the framing would need to be checked and recomposed if necessary, though I eventually eliminated this problem by switching over to the 410 geared head which is much more resistant to slippage as well as being easier to compose with.

Depends upon ones definition of spark. Art is a way of first translating and then communicating internal emotions to others via the external medium of music, writing, painting/photography/film, acting, etc. But not everyone can do this well. Many people who do not have this talent nontheless will try to force the process with muddled results that please no one, i.e. they have no spark, they cannot translate their emotions into external reality well or have no strong emotions in the first place. That is why it is said that great art often comes from or requires great pain. You have to have a strong point of view about something which usually comes from strong emotions, both good and bad, and then have a strong desire to communicate those emotions to others. You have to know what you want or are trying to say, if you don't it will come out muddled and/or confused, i.e. no clear emotions are being communicated. The place for practice and the skill that results from it is what enables you to properly translate those emotions into whatever medium you choose. And it is equally important that you choose the right medium that matches your own personality. You may have the requisite strong emotions but photography may not be your medium. The only way to know for sure is to experiment with it and other mediums if photography doesn't seem to work out. Who knows you may a great writer (or something else) instead. A good question to always ask yourself in determining if you have the correct medium for yourself is how much you are enjoying either the process and/or the results of your work. I hope this helps. Good luck

Don't get a cokin unless you want nd filters with a magenta cast.

There's no reason to spend the extra money on a focotar II unless you just have to have Leica as the apos from both Schneider and Rodenstock are virtually just as good. The Nikon apos also have a superb reputation but tend to be as pricy as the Leica.

Remember that under cold conditions battery life is greatly reduced. The standard shots per charge rating is usually done at room temp. I don't know if canon provides any figures for cold temps but you might check. I would bring as many back up batteries as I could reasonably carry and/or some sort of a solar powered battery charger if such a thing exists. You also might want to bring along and old fully manual non battery dependent film camera just to be safe. I use an old retina 3c for that purpose as they are very compact and virtually bullet proof and have a selenium (non battery) meter built in.

I've taken a lot of pictures under dim lighting conditions, which I assume will be similar to the inside of the temples, and IS is essential for good shots w/o a tripod.If you don't mind carring a tripod then IS is not as important though you cannot always set up a tripod in all circumstances. The 28-135 IS is a decent enough lens and works very well but don't expect anywhere near the optical quality that you are used to getting from your 50 f1.4. Non L zooms are never going to be as good optically as a non L prime lens.

Thanks for the test info. The 24-70 f2.8 at f5.6 is obviously the sharpest and not just due to exposure differences. Makes you realize that not L lenses are created equal.

If you are wanting the biggest bang for the buck prime non L lenses are the way to go. Many of them compare favorably in quality to the L's such as the 100mm f2.8 macro, 28mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.8 all of which are excellent optically if well constructed, the build quality though is far more variable in non L's i.e. a well built 28mm is excellent but a poorly built misaligned one is bad (test them first and if bad return for another), whereas with the L's all are built to precision. Where you can see a noticeable difference between the L and non L is in the zooms. There you need all of the special glass (fluorite, ed, etc.) help you can get due too the complexity of design. Telephotos are a different matter. There you need the special glass of an L in order to control cromatic abberation/lateral color problems.

The MP-E 65 would obviously be the easist way to go if you can afford the $800, the other ways are, of course, extension tubes or bellows. I've tried reversing non-macro lenses which worked fine, though you lose edge sharpness, but not a macro so don't know what would happen. You could not hand hold it and get controled results due to a very shallow depth of field at that magnification causing your point of focus and framing to shift constantly back and forth due to your shaking hands and swaying body movements being greatly magnified. Nor could you easily use ambient light without using a tripod coupled with long exposures unless you didn't want any depth of field. When I was shooting my high mag. photography I was having to use at least f32-128 just to get enough depth of field to be able to see what I was photographing otherwise only one tiny spot was in focus (I was shooting flowers). This required long (1-5 minutes) exposures on a tripod using hot lights in a studio (no wind). You could try hand holding using a ring flash outdoors as this would eliminate camera shake and allow a higher f stop but it doesn't stop your point of focus or framing from shifting due to your body swaying but if your circumstances require outdoor work hand held this would be your best bet.

Having shot college plays numerous times I've learned the hard way that the best combination is a fast (f2.8) zoom lens with image stablization in the 70-200mm range with the camera set at least at 800 asa minimum, higher if the camera can handle it and/or if your enlargements aren't going to be too large. The Canon seems to work best at those high speeds but the Nikon probably would do as well. The key is the f2.8 zoom with is or vr which is necessary for hand holding because during a live performance the action takes place too fast to use a tripod.

I have a preference for bogen as I do not like the twist collars on the gitzos, they're much slower. Carbon fiber is the nicest overall as they are more like wood in that they are less likely to be as hot or cold as metal, also being naturally black they have low reflectivity and no paint to wear off. I also pefer the bogen 410 precision geared head as you can compose exactally what you want with a minimum of fuss though they are slower to use an can weigh a little more. All of the major filter glass filter manufacturers are good but look for the ones that offer the best multiple coatings--I like Hoya super multi-coated ones but for plastic I would only use Hi-Tech, especially for neutral density as they are actually neutral, the others tend to have a pronounced magenta (esp. cokin) or green bias.

Depends on what your defination of "best" is. If it is optical quality alone then the Mamiya is best by far as their lens quality rivals that of Leica (literally), only in medium format size. Contax, having Zeiss lenses, is also good but you lose a lot of resolution (around 30%)in being 645 vs. 67 also the mamiya lenses are still better (all things being equal rangefinder lenses will usually be better than slr lenses, at least in wide angle as they are simpler in design since there is no mirror to compensate for.) The biggest bang for the buck is the pentax. Their lenses are not as good as either mamiya or contax (their contrast is as good but not their resolution) but it is a 67 slr which will have less grain than 645 and is usually much easier to compose with than a rangefinder plus they are so heavy that you can hand hold them at 1/30 second without noticeable camera shake.

Which brings up another area of consideration, weight. If you plan on shooting outside of a studio a lot (if you're just wanting a studio camera then you should really get a mamiya RB67 II) the pentax weighs a lot, especially with the lenses. Also if you plan on shooting on a tripod, all medium format focal plane shutters have a pronounced kick at 1/30 of a second and slower that must be compensated for by putting a weight on top of their pentaprism (when I had my pentax 67 and 645 I would drape my camera bag across the top, it weighed about 10 lbs. but it worked). Another camera to consider is the old Koni-Omega, the only 67 rangefinder with interchangable backs. They are only about 20% of the cost of the mamiya with lenses about 85-90% as good (rangefinder lenses again), definately better than the pentax lenses. They weigh more than the mamiya and do not have auto-exposure but if you shoot more than one type of film the interchangable backs are really nice. But their lens selection is limited, as are all rangefinders.

Hope this helps. Good luck.