tombest

<p>Frankly, I wish I had a 70-300 to take instead of the 70-200 for the weight savings. And I think I would be best served, weight wise, by taking the camera without the grip. I only have two primes and neither are wide so I suspect the 12-24 and 18-105 will carry most of the load.<br>

Thanks for all the input.</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>OK. So the SB600 is out. The SB800 is the better and easier to use flash and I do want it along to give me an option to get creative when light gets low. That saves a few ounces. The tripod is a non-negotiable for me. My ability to hand-hold isn't' what it used to be so it <em>will</em> get used.<br>

One thing I didn't mention is that I do have and use a an MB-D11 grip. I greatly prefer it when hand-holding shots. It adds a pound to the weight with the extra battery but the feel is better. I would rather it be on than not but don't have to have it. Maybe I trade the weight of the SB600 for it?</p>

<p>Bob, no hiking experience per se, but mountain bike for exercise and am in decent, if not good shape for my age. I do plan to hike down in to some degree but have heard that getting down and back up in one day is pretty tough. A friend told me that I would not want to miss the additional viewpoints available by a descent of any magnitude.<br>

About the memory... I ordered some Lexar 400X, 32 GB cards from Amazon before I knew of their actual write speed. They write considerably slower than the Sandisk 45mb/s cards I have so I intended to send them back. The investment was pretty small and I suppose it would be considerably cheaper to keep them as backup than hunt for cards locally if I did run out. (It's not like the Canyon moves all that fast.) But I do intend to shoot a fair amount of bracket photos and thought the extra speed might be needed. In Lexar speak it takes 600X to hit 45mb/s of write speed.</p>

<p>Thanks for the responses. I appreciate the heads up about the water. My 60mm is my sharpest lens and I feel sort of naked without it but the 70-200 isn't far behind and the only sacrifice is the close focus. We plan to spend a couple of days in Sedona as well and will visit Red Rock Canyon but what works from Grand Canyon Village will work there as well. </p>

<p>I am heading to the Grand Canyon soon and am wondering if I will need to bring my 60mm Nikkor along. I will have my D7000, a Tokina 12-24 F4.0, 18-105 Nikon kit lens and 70-200 F2.8 VR1. I plan to also bring my SB600 and SB800. I have an Induro CT218 carbon tripod with an Acratech GV1 head. My variables are the 60mm macro and my TC14E-II teleconverter for my 70-200. It would save a little weight to not have them in the bag. I don't know if the canyon presents macro opportunities or if there is enough wildlife where the 1.4 would be a help in any way. It will be my first trip out there and don't know exactly what to expect outside of the expanse. I think I have enough memory... 6 X 16gb. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks,<br>

Tom</p>

 

I haven't looked at sites other than B&H but they show discounts on several of these 8X carbon tripods with the 25% on top of the

discount. The deal I got on my CT214 was nothing short of amazing. If I didn't already have a '4' series Induro I would have been

tempted to buy the 314 or 414. I needed something to travel with and got what I wanted. Awesome deal right now.

<p>For anyone looking for a carbon fiber tripod... Induro is offering a 25% rebate on all their CT 8X carbon fiber series tripods through the end of June. I have an Induro C413 that I love, but ordered a CT-214 for use when we travel to the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks. I also noticed that the price seems to have been reduced on the '2' series tripods making them even more affordable. I'm not interested in a 'whose tripod is the best' post but wanted to let anyone know who was in the market for a tripod that a sale is in progress. The Induros are highly regarded and a 25% discount is pretty solid.</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>Great shots everyone. This is from a stroll through Morikami Gardens in Delray Beach, FL. Crown of Thorns bloom... somewhat appropriate plant for this past Easter weekend.</p><div></div>

<p>@ Shun. Is that a long-term test DF you are using or did you buy one? Also, after my last post regarding the TC14E and my 70-200 I have been using the lens without the converter. Much better results. Thanks.</p>

<p>One more with the prize in hand. Or beak</p><div></div>

<p>Managed to get out to a South Florida wetland this past weekend. Lots to see with all the nesting pairs of egrets and herons. This Great Blue Heron was busy transporting selected twigs and branches to the nest where its partner and chick were. Occasionally, there is the inevitable preening required to keep oneself pretty.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for the kind words Laura.</p>

<p>Was out birding again this past weekend to a local south Florida wetland named Wakodahatchee where the birds are close and nesting in great numbers. Early in the morning, there was this nesting pair of Great Egrets preparing their nest for the upcoming family. One would leave the nest and return with a twig which they would, together place in the nest. Quite something to watch.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks, Laura. I assume this is a male?</p>

<p>Birding in South Florida this weekend at a wetland called Green Cay yielded this Tri-Colored Heron with an unusual beak color. Lots of these fellows around but the first I have seen with this beak coloration. Quite striking</p><div></div>

<p>Kenneth, I guess the issue here is that the results of adding a teleconverter to a fixed focal length lens are different than those with a zoom. And I have the early version of the 70-200 F2.8 which evidently was vastly improved in the VRII version and even surpassed by the new 70-200 F4.0 for sharpness. If birding is the goal, I will need to add a minimum of a 300mm fixed focal length lens or swap my 70-200 for one. Thanks,</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>A 300mm lens of some sort is on my short list of lenses to buy and I have been tempted to sell my 70-200 in exchange for one. It seems that when I need the focal length, I am always at the long end of my 70-200. Lately, I mostly use it for wildlife and it's not a good choice but I have nothing longer. The TC14E was a relatively inexpensive way to add distance but it does degrade the image somewhat. A new camera <em>and</em> lens is out of reach at the time but a 300 F4 might not be.<br>

Elliot, it's a good thought to skip the 1.4. I originally had a D200 and couldn't upsize too much before but I should rethink that since I have a D7000 now. You asked where? We were at an STA 18 miles west of Stuart during an Audubon outing. The STA was just recently opened and the we couldn't get very close to anything without the birds taking flight. It was mostly a levee ride around the outside of it with shooting distances long... and in the time it took to get my tripod out, everything was flying. It was pretty much hand-held or nothing.<br>

I suppose I have been suspicious of the slight softness of the combo since I started using it together but never understood that coupling the 1.4 to a <em>zoom</em>, even a decent one, wasn't the best plan. And for the record, I have had to dial in focus correction for each of my lenses because my D7000 does back-focus. I am satisfied with my settings on each lens but the 70-200 takes -20 to get there... just there.<br>

So, thanks for all the responses. I think I have my answer. It's not enough lens for birding in most locations and the results I have are typical and adequate for the combo.<br>

Tom</p>

<p>@Matthew... the AF was set to AF-C.<br>

@Shun... My camera may be capable of the kind of clarity in your example but the combo I have will not. There is serious detail in the eye of the Seagull that I can't duplicate with my 70-200 and converter.<br>

@Kenneth... yes, I am guilty of pixel peeping the results from the 500mm and 600mm lenses I see posted here.<br>

I attempted to do what Shun did in his example to show the entire photo inset into the crop to show what the overall picture looks like. I have tried to resize the full shot but have gotten lousy results going from the 9.25MB file to under 300 for posting here.</p><div></div>

<p>Photo...</p><div></div>

<p>Recently I was on an outing in South Florida to a wetland where we encountered a wide variety of wildlife. The birds were skittish and good shots of them were pretty scarce. I did manage a decent shot of a Great Egret in flight but was somewhat disappointed in the sharpness of the photo. Since the lens and teleconverter combo I was using does not have a stellar reputation together I was wondering if this is just as good as it gets.<br>

I have a D7000 and had my 70-200 F2.8 VRI and my TC14E II converter attached to it. The shot was taken as ISO200 and was shot at 1/2000 of a second at F 8.0 - handheld with the VR on. The lens was at 200mm making the effective focal length 280MM or an equivalent of 420mm factoring in the crop multiplier.<br>

I used View NX to convert the RAW file into a jpeg and then did a 100% crop of the photo. I then sized it to 700 pixels in width to comply with Photo.net guidelines. It was saved at max quality for a net of 170kb.<br>

The whole file is 9.25MB and way to large to post here. I have nowhere I post pictures at other sites to provide a link, so the posted crop here is the best I can offer. No other editing was done to the photo in any way (noise, sharpening, contrast, etc.). Is this typical performance from a 70-200 VRI and 1.4 teleconverter? Thanks,</p>

<p>Tom<br>

</p>

<p>Lil, I wrote to Jim to see if he is taking on work at this time and what the cost would be to convert my D200. By the way, I received 5 messages from you, not just one... all identical, even though your response didn't post to the thread. The Internet is a strange and wonderful creature, isn't it?</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>Lil, don't know what happened that you couldn't post to the thread but I received your messages and will take a look at your preferred converter. Love the pics you included, by the way. What filter do you have in your camera?</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>Thanks for all the information. One more question about the available filters that can be installed. I wasn't aware that there were different filters that could be installed and mistakenly thought all converted cameras captured the classic, contrasty black and white IR images. I currently use a late version of PSE for editing (and DxO Optics Pro) and from what I have seen of the tutorials on the Internet, to take advantage of the color enhancing IR filters one would need to work the Channel Mixer from one of the CS versions of Photoshop. I can't say that I am necessarily drawn to those photos but wouldn't want to limit myself by choosing the most basic of conversion to IR if there was a distinct advantage in choosing one of the other available filters. Without a full version of Photoshop I'm not sure I could tweak an enhanced IR capture and am not interested in buying CS at this time. Life Pixel's site is very informative and their tutorials helpful and after wading through all the information I think the basic conversion would be my best option unless one of you tells me otherwise. Thanks again for the feedback.<br>

Tom</p>

 

<p>Nice shots Michael. A buddy has an old CoolPix he converted and gets pretty stunning shots with it as well. That's what prompted the thought to convert. I see that Maxmax gets $450 for their conversion. All things being equal, $250 is better for me than $450. I didn't know about the 'perpetual' sale at Life Pixel because I just started looking. I'm not familiar with a lens hot spot after IR conversion. Can you elaborate on that? And how would you check for that before conversion? I have two lenses that I don't use often anymore and either would or could be used but the 18-70 would see more use for landscape work than my 24-120 F3.5-5.6 VR. Thanks,</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>I bought a D7000 several months back and since, my D200 has been tucked away in a corner. The camera is worth a couple hundred bucks if traded in on something else but I have nothing I really need to have, lens-wise, at the moment. It occurred to me that converting the D200 to IR might be an interesting proposition. In doing a search for IR conversions, I ran across a company that is currently discounting their conversion by $150, making the cost $250. I have a couple of questions about this and am hoping there is some knowledge out there about the process and the company.</p>

<p>The company offering the discount is Life Pixel. Anyone had any dealings with them? And is the D200 even a good candidate for conversion? This company seems to set up the conversion with a lens that you tell them you will use, but their default lens is the 18-70 kit lens that I still have. Or is there another company you can recommend? I would be burning up the precious little mad money I have left but having a dedicated IR camera would open a new avenue for me. Any thoughts?</p>

<p>Tom</p>