jam

<p>How much is it, 90 bucks? Why bother thinking?</p>

My 2 cents to this discussion: What monitor do you have? I used to have Dell 1703FP and had similar problem with it. If the picture looked OK on that monitor - it almost certainly was waaaay too dark on other monitors. This was the same after I started calibrating that monitor every two weeks. Ended up selling it couple weeks ago, because it was too frustrating. Right now I am looking for a replacement.

Despite what everybody says about Sigmas, I own equal number of Nikkors and Sigmas. I even use 18-50 f/2.8 and

10-20mm, as my two primary lenses. I may be lucky guy, but I picked good copies on my first attempt.

Just another silly question: Is your photography teacher by any chance also a camera dealer? He definitely sounds like one if he is trying to convince you to giveup the equipment that you personally like. If I were you I would learn first and then upgrade if you feel like you need it.

I just returned from a trip in Peru and Bolivia, where I took my 16GB card and took enough pictures to find out something strange. First of all card worked in my D200 just fine. Bad news is the camera was capable to store only about 8GB of data on it. I don't know if it is the bug of my camera only, but it happened. After shooting 1054 compressed RAWs, camera was showing capacity for over 300 more shots, but stopped saving them. Luckily for me I noticed it and inserted new card... Anybody has similar experience?

Here are my attempts. I was frozen solid - including the brain, so it took me a while until I remembered how to use spot metering :)<br>

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<a href="http://www.janmarkus.com/showimg.php?actimg=1&actgalry=Eclipse&lastimg=4">Photo1</a><br>

<a href="http://www.janmarkus.com/showimg.php?actimg=2&actgalry=Eclipse&lastimg=4">Photo2</a><br>

<a href="http://www.janmarkus.com/showimg.php?actimg=3&actgalry=Eclipse&lastimg=4">Photo3</a><br>

I have similar with problem 80-200AFS and D70 but it includes teleconverter. My lens works fine on my D70 body. However, when I put TC between the lens and body, the AF does not work at all, and metering is also "funky" (at fixed aperture, the time values jump from 1/100 to 5", while the camera is steady). It is not a problem of TC itsel - I'seen this so far with two telecenverters. And bot of them worked fine with my other AFS lenses. Any clue?

I decided for Sigma 10-20 and bought it from B&H photovideo for $479 plus shipping - it was impossible to get it in Maryland (Ritz and PennCamera don't sell it). Got it yesterday - so far I am happy. The only complaint would be that the zoom ring is a little stiff. Otherwise - it is sharp from corner to corner - even @ 10mm wide open (tested on newspaper shot); haven't seen any fringing or ghosts (though not tested on direct sunlight yet). No visible distortion present (especially when compared with my Nikon 18-70 at wide end). About vigneting - sofar I only did flash shots, so obviously there was lots of vigneting, but nothing unreparable in PS.