lennartmaschmeyer

Hi,

thanks for all the answers. I used photomatix, the artifacts are gone and the picture looks, great advice roger!

Apart from that I noticed the final picture has 4 pixels higher resolution than my camera, so i must have moved the camera these 4 pixels between the exposures...Probably thats where those auras around the buildings came from, too. I guess I really need to buy a cable release to take these kind of pictures.

Cheers

Lennart

Hello,

I am trying out the HDR feature of CS3 a bit and took the attached picture of

the sunrise today. There is a weird halo around the building and some other

sharp edges in the picture after I combined 8 shots in 1EV steps.

Is there anyway of avoiding these flaws or is it just what happens if you shoot

directly into the sun?

Any help would be great.

cheers

Lennart

Last week I bought a Pentax K2 which seemed to be working. However, the light

meter is stuck, it only responds from time to time and the camera depleted the

new batteries i bought in one night. What do you think a repair would probably

cost? <br>

Now in three days I will go to China and really would like to take a film

camera, but I'm a student and without money. The only other choice I have is an

Pentax ME body, with a fungus growing inside the prism. I am a bit afraid it

will spread onto my lenses if I use them on that body. How would you recommend

to exterminate the fungus threat?<p>Does anyone here know a good Camera shop in

Chengdu/Sichuan where I might be able to buy another cheap second hand body or

even fix the K2?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!<br>

Lennart

Interesting answers, I am not necessarily against city life. Of course this is quite subjective and more about my own feeling while exploring tokyo. A japanese writer I talked to there said "I dont know whats wrong with this country, these people are like robots, no eye contact and no feelings". It might come to one's mind that Tokyo as the biggest city in the world could be kind of a view into the near future. What makes you think is the regularity of suicides in the subways, which are called "human accident" and happen everyday. On one hand there is a seemingly interchangeable mass of working bees, but then there are many youth subcultures about dressing up as unusual as possible in order to stand out. School girls prostitute themselves to businessmen to buy the newest fashions. Status objects are more important to them than their own bodies, maybe people working in Tokyo are not that much different as they prostitute themselves into 12 hour working days without holiday to produce more economic growth. It is like the economy has turned back on people, whose worth is measured in the ability to produce and consume.<br>

@Fred: I would be interested to see your opposing series<br>

@Vin: "where would we be today without cities" - that is my question

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=718259">

This</a> is a series of photos I just created showing a faceless mass of people

inhabitating an artificial world. If you look at the faces you notice most of

them are in a state of expressionless melancholy - why do people create these

giant cities when nobody really likes being there? Your thoughts are most

welcome!<br>Lennart

I have been using this lens with my K10D for two months now and it works fine,

but for some reason the focus moves "over" infinity. If I use it in manual mode

and turn the focus ring to the infinity position, the picture will be unsharp.

Only if I turn it slightly back I will get a sharp picture and that seems a bit

odd to me.

Does someone else have the same problem?

Cheers, Lennart

thanks for he quick answers, so this is the much talked about banding...

Normally I do not shoot at high iso's, so it does not matter to me that much. Anyway if this fault exist just with some of the pentax cameras I might try to get an exchange anyway.

Michael, thank you for your words, I am quite happy with the 16-45mm lens, its very sharp for a zoom lens, but in comparison with my minolta primes I feel the colours do not look as natural. But this might be the K10D as well, I am new to digital photography, just made the transition with the K10D three weeks ago.

Anyway, I tried it with an old SMC-M 135mm lens and the pictures just looked much more beautiful to me, a much warmer look somehow. I might try to get old pentax primes soon, as I dont have enough money for the pancakes right now.

I just shot this picture today and noticed quite visible lines, especially at

the bottom right corner of the image. For the sample picture I used only the

blue channel, somehow it was most obvious there. Is this normal with digital

cameras at high ISO's or is it a fault of the pentax?

thanks for reading, sorry if this question has been asked many times before, i

was not quite sure what to search for.

Lennart

Hi,

I just tried out my new K10D with a Hoya R72 Filter, it seems to work quite

well, apart from quite long exposure times needed. here are some examples, I

thought it might be interesting for some people:

<p>

<a href="http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/12/30/571903/IGP0677.jpg">image

1</a><br>

<a href="http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/12/30/571903/IGP0662.jpg">image

2</a><br>

<a href="http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/12/30/571903/IGP0660.jpg">image

2</a>

<p>

They were all shot as raw with the DA 16-45mm lens at f4,5 and 20s exposure in

bright daylight. converted to b&w in photoshop.<br>

cheers<br>

Lennart

Hi,

I just found out about the upcoming Pentax K10D, which seems to be really promising. So I decided to take my Maxxum to Japan and do some more slides first. It shouldn't be too expensive to process film there, at least its fuji country.

If I can manage to save some money there I will buy the K10D after christmas. thanks for your thoughts!

Lennart

hi,

thanks for your answers so far!

I also thought about buying a 7D, but because Minolta has ceased to exist I think I will switch to canon sooner or later anyway. Apart from that I guess the 7d will loose its value quite fast, so I think it might be ok for this trip but not for the future.

It still is quite expensive, about 550?, and I could get a used 20d for 600?, too. From what I've read so far the 20d is a considerably better camera than the 7D, so if I spend any money on this I would go for the Canon I think.

Hi,

I am about to go to Japan for a working holiday, just having returned from a

10-months-stay in new zealand 3 months ago. I consider myself an ambitioned

amateur and realized how much I enjoy taking pictures during my stay in NZ.

But because of the incredible cost of slide film and development there (I

alculated its about NZ$1,30 per picture), I had to limit myself harshly only

to take very special pictures, as I sometimes did not even have enough money

to have a place to sleep for the night except my car.

In retrospective I think I missed a lot of good pictures of everyday life in

nz that way.

This way I failed in trying to write for a german magazine, because most of my

pictures are just landscape shots.

By the way I am 22 and about to enter university next year, until now I

haven't gained any qualifications, in New Zealand I survived by doing jobs

like dishwashing and working on the farms and plantations.

Now I am off to Japan for another working holiday stay with no more than about

2000? as a budget. Probably I will not find a job there quickly, considering I

dont speak japanese yet, so I will have to live from this money first.

Again, I am afraid I might miss out on a lot pictures there, because I will be

broke most of the time and having to save my film.

For this reason I am tempted to quickly buy a EOS 20d together with the 17-

85mm IS lens, to use it as an walkaround camera there. But I would like to

keep my MAxxum7, to be able to still use some conventional BW film and do Wide-

Angle shots. I mostly use fixed focal lenghts for the maxxum, currently I own

a 20mm f2,8/28mm 2,8/50mm f1,7 and 100-200mm f4,5.

My dilemma is, if I buy the canon now, I hope to "get more out" of my stay in

Japan. But it will eat up half of my budget, so I might have to return home

earlier, if I don't manage to find some sort of job.

On the other hand, I think by using the 20d, I'll might get a higher chance of

publishing some of my pictures afterwards, just by having a much wider choice.

What would you do?

cheers

Lennart

Hi,

yes you were right! Thank you, now this feels quite stupid.

I would probably still be sitting here wondering if you hadnt told me...

How come the ICE does not work together with BW film?

Cheers Lennart<div></div>

Hi,

i have been trying to get any useful scan out of my PanF film roll for 2 days

now, without success so far...It worked great with my slides before, thats why

I'm so puzzled.

Somehow the pictures are without contrast at all, although i was able to

produce nice prints from them on real paper. I tried scanning it with the

negative (mono) setting of nikonscan 4.0 and the positive setting as well.

If I add contrast in PS it gets an almost polarized kind of look.

here is a sample picture:<div></div>