afx

Who cares?<p>

cheers<br>

afx

17" is hard to come by.<br>

Apart form that, check out the dualcore T60 from IBM/Lenovo.<br>

Fill it up with memory.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

<b>Get Dualcore! </b><p>

Just set up my dualcore Athlon box (just the cheap 2Ghz) and it is miles faster on my D200 files than my single core ever was on my D70 files.<p> I now can edit images in the foreground while the batches run in the background.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Probably a false positive.<br>

Have you contacted Colorvision and the company that makes your spyware checker yet?<p>

cheers<br>

afx

The Canon is slow and might have dark noise when connected via USB.<br>

Apart from that, it is really nice together with VUESCAN and custom profiles made from calibration slides.<br>

Recommended as a low cost solution if you are not in a hurry,<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Hi John,

the D70 is a joke compared to the F100. My F100 is on e-bay right now and my D70 will follow soon.<p> I bought my D70 this summer as I was fed up with slide processing costs rising (used to be quite cheap in Germany compared to the US) and quality going down. If I had known the D200 is so close I would have waited.<br>

Image wise the D70 is a fine camera, but the rest is so much below the F100. Slow AF, slow frame rate (I shoot moving animals and if you are into sports, then the 4 frame buffer and 3fps are not good enough), tiny viewfinder, AF mode switching via a backpanel menu, no portrait grip.<br>

The D200 is the only game in town if you want an F-Mount DSLR that compares to the F100 (of course there is always the D2x...).<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Bibble is my favourite RAW converter: check out http://www.bibblelabs.com/

<p>

I might use it once Bibble supports it.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

My favourite is the Acratech: http://acratech.net/<br>

Best combination of weight/sturdiness in my opinion.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

If you do not need the wired remote, get the D70. That is the only thing on the D70s that I am missing on my D70, the IR remote is a joke for what I need a remote for (tripod work).

<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Hi Justin,<br>

Picture Window Pro has a calender feature. It has a free trial download, so just give it a try.<p> (I must admit, I never used this part of the program myself).<p>

cheers<br>

afx

iMatch for management, Bibble Pro for conversion, PWP for editing.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Instead of spending oodles of money on a product with a very ugly activation scheme, have a look at Picture Window Pro. 16bit and color managed from day one. Fully functional trial version can be downloaded from www.dl-c.com. Give it a try, you won't miss much plugins .<p>

GIMP does support plugins, but of course, not PS plugins. But it is not 16bit clean and not color managed.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Hi Ivan,<br>

I was wondering about the sharpness when focussing at something that is a bit further away than the distance marks of the lens.<p>

And Edward explained the reasons behind this pretty nicely.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Mike, <br>

no, this is not what I am talking about. DOF is perfectly clear to me. I am only talking about the plane that the lens is focussed on (as you said the point of exact focus). So DOF never plays a role. I also never mentioned the DOF guides on the lens, but the distance marks. The DOF marks will just tell you approxmately how much in front and back you have DOF in relation to the distance mark you are on. But I am only interested in the point of exact focus.<p>

Edwards explanation above seems the logical one. Lenses can only be tack sharp in a certain range, then you are getting out of the area the lens was calculated for and closer to the point where any light comes in in parallel and sharpness will suffer.<p>

cheers<p>

afx

I don't try to accomplish anything specific, I just wanted to understand. Since I switched to digital I sometime scrutinize images more than it is good for me and that raises questions.<p>

It all started when I tried to get wide angle shots of some wooden poles with ornaments on them (arranged in a zodiac circle at dusk giving me really dreamlike colors) where I felt they where too soft. So the next day I started playing around (now in bright light). I ended up taking several lenses and with each of them I took a picture of a pole (with some small graphics on it and wood structure) from 1m distance. Then I took a step back, refocussed and snapped another one and so forth until I was quite a bit furher away from the pole than the lens markings go.<br> I did this with my medium to wide zooms. (Tokina 12-24 and 28-70).<br> I played a similar game with my AFS 80-200 and the 300 AFS but different targets.<p>

Depending on the quality of the lens the effect is more or less pronounced. From what I read above I seem to hit the optical limits of the lenses or the lens adjustment here.<p>

This experiment also showed me that the horrendous price of the AFS lenses seems to be justified in those areas, as their sharpness falloff or softening after the marked distance is quite less pronounced than with the Tokinas.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

And no, I don't mean the markings on the lens are inaccurate,

What I am wondering is whether it is possible to get a tack sharp image from an object that is further away from the camera than the lens markings go. <p>

thx<br>

afx <p>

maybe I explained it right this time... ;-)

Ok, I used the wrong language. With focal plane I meant the plane where everything is sharp, where the object I am focussed on is, where the focus is, not the sensor. The Object is really 7m away, but the lens markings only go to 5m. 7m is still way below infinity.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Focus is just fine... But the object in the focal plane is bejond the range markings of the lens.<p>

cheers<br>

afx

Hmm, I guess I was not clear enough on the question.<br>

This has nothing to do with DOF. I am only talking of the plane of focus.<br>

And I am not really at infinity yet.<br>

If the lens has markings up to 5m and my subject (that is perfectly in focus) is at 7m it is not tack sharp, but a bit soft.

It also does not matter at which apperture I shoot, 2.8 or 8, the effect is the same. <p>

cheers<br>

afx

Hi,<p>

Can I expect tack sharp images from a lens beyond the marked ranges

(when the focus is somewhere round the infinity mark, but not very far

beyond the marked distance range)?<br>

Currently my experiments seem to indicate that this is impossible

(using pro zooms like the AFS 80-200/2.8, ATX Pro 28-70/2.8 and others

of similar quality on a D70).<br>

The difference seems to be slightly less pronounced when using primes

like the AFS 300/2.8, but it is still there.

Once I am beyond the marked range (range is for example 0.3-5m, focus

is at 9m), the images are still in focus,

but soft compared to those where the plane of focus was within the

marked distance range.<p>

Am I hitting some optical limit or do I have a problem of

understanding or what?<p>

thx<br>

afx

I've downloaded his files (4JPGs), that's why I said reduce the ISO, the EXIF in there speaks loud and clear.

cheers

afx

Me thinks the language here is English and you would get more answers if yout wrote in English.<p>

Why do you expect your D70 to be low noise (compared to the ISO 50 of the digicam) at ISO 1600? <p>

Set the ISO to 200 on the D70 and then compare.<p>

Oder in anderen Worten, ne D70 kann auch nicht hexen. Rauscharm bei 1600 ISO brauchst Du bei dem Preis nicht erwarten.<p>

cheers<br>

afx <p>

I often use Bibble on Linux to cull and check my D70 files...<br>

The only commercial RAW Processor available on Linux.<p>

But I can't do editing on Linux as long as Gimp is not 16bit clean. And currently there is not good Image DB available (I am used to the functionality of iMatch, nothing compareable exists on Linux)<p>

cheers<br>

afx

USB 2 alone does not help much. Get USB 2 High speed (or Firewire). I fell into that trap. Of course, your host computer must support it as well.<p>

USB 2: 12Mbit/s<br>

USB 2 High Speed:480Mbit/s<br>

Firewire 400Mbit/s<p>

cheers<br>

afx

The older version can be found on ebay occcasionally (still shrink wrapped).

cheers

afx