georgeseymour

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<p>You are using a 210mm lens on 4x5" format.<br>

This is equivalent to 48mm on a Canon Rebel fitted with an 18-200mm, or 70mm on a Nikon D700 fitted with a 24-120mm. These settings obtained by setting up my 4x5" with a 210mm lens and then using the above cameras to take the exact same width view with the camera held at the same position as the lens on the 4x5", not the film plane.<br>

Assuming you have a similar camera or access to such, try taking pictures of your subject with one of these on these settings (48mm or 70mm) and f16/ASA100 and the flash set to full power, and your current picture set-up to see what you are getting. A digital camera will allow you to immediately see what you are getting, where you need to add/subtract light to obtain what you want.<br>

Your lights don’t have to be on the camera.<br>

You can try mounting your light on a tripod closer to the subject and use a lead to fire it if you can’t do that from the camera’s flash.<br>

Also try rigging your flash to fire into an umbrella, (again you only need a common white, or yellow umbrella if you don’t have a photo type) and can mount it on any type of support (chair, tripod, stick, broom etc), with tape, string elastic bands, clips etc.<br>

Hopefully from this you will be able to better decide what you need in the way of extra lighting. It’s possible that a couple of cheap flash units set up as above and positioned correctly will provide what you want, but may not be aesthetically pleasing.<br>

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<p>Are you holding just the camera? You should be holding the camera body with one hand while the other hand supports the lense, especially with a longer lense. I notice a lot of people who hold a long lensed camera by holding only the body and no support on the lense, then they wonder why the image isn't sharp, even at 1/800 - 1/1000 it won't be fast enough to give a sharp image. Would you hold a rifle by only the stock and expect to hit the target?</p>

<p>I turned my neck strap round so the black side is outside and you really can't see the advert when it's around your neck. Weight wise it weighs 4 lbs with 24-120mm zoom compared to my old F2 at 3 lb 12 ozs with 80-200mm, but it had a much narrower neck strap, 1" compared to the D700's 1.5", (both straps came with the cameras when I bought them, and I've never used anything else). Previous Nikon/Nikomats had leather straps which were even narrower.<br>

I'm planing a 100 mile walk in Sulawesi Indonesia with my gear, so hope it's not to much to carry as the walk is solely for photographic purposes, so I need to carry everything I need in tropical heat.</p><div></div>

<p>Everyone seems to be missing the point. It's not the sensor that counts, it's the lense you fit in front of it.</p>

<p>I've bought a Canon EOS 400D (Rebel to those of you in the USA) along with a Sigma 18-200 and find that on wide angle shots with a horizon, ie. the sea, I get a smiley horizon, now I'm sure this isn't the sensor, or the camera, but the lense.</p>

<p>I'm a Nikon fan due to having a complete range (15mm to 1000mm) lenses which I bought for my still operational F2's and they still take exceedingly good pictures. I've just ordered a D700 with 24PC-E lense (not yet arrived, as Nikon assures me that I can still continue to fit my old lenses to it).</p>

<p>Build quality is also a factor to take into consideration.</p>

<p>Once I bought a Tamron 75-250 (back in easrly '70's) and took it to Africa, by the end of which it wasn't really worth using. My Nikons have been all over the world and bounced around all over the place without problems, dropped my 15mm in a salt water pool once and had to have it serviced.</p>

<p>Read somewhere on here that someone had to throw their Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III out of a window to save it from confication, and retrieved it later, still in working order, but I suspect that like all delicate instruments, it had a lot to do with what it landed on rather than the throwing part.</p>

<p>Both Nikon and Canon are tough instruments and are built for long and hard work.</p>

<p>How many of us need 24Mpixels? Great for extracting small parts of the image, but you'd probably be better off getting closer to the subject in the first place, unless there is something preventing you, in which case use a longer lense, if you have one.</p>

<p>More important is getting out there and taking the photos you want, if it needs 21Mp or 24Mp to obtain them, then go buy the apropriate camera and a large hard drive to accommodate the images.</p>

<p>Has anyone done a shoot with all the different lenses/cameras (both SLR & compact) of the same subject, processed in Photoshop or a.n. other processing package, and reduced them to photo.net viewing size and compared the results to see what the differences are to the average viewer? It would be interesting.</p>

More to the point is "How does one search using a photo's ID number".

 

When one types in the number that is displayed during loading of the photo or given as its ID the result is always "No results for this".

While typing a single word or multiple words may or may not bring up results ranging from just a few to many thousands of possible images, and little way of being able to view more than the first few without spending hours opening page after page to review those found.

 

I try to keep a record of photos and photographers that I like or wish to get back to, but once moved on from my original position, or closed down and re-opened, it's often very difficult or impossible to track down individual photos again.

Theft by any other name is still theft.

 

Those responsible are criminals and those aiding and abetting them by any means whatsoever are also criminals and open to prosecution no matter what the law.

 

We see the music and film industry falling over themselves with legislation to protect their "rights".

 

Why not for us? Someone needs to get people in Congress onto this on this basis.

I would suggest photographing in 3 sections with the camera pointing vertically at the centre of each cupola, if you only take one in the centre the detail on the two outer ones on the sides that curve down towards the centre one may be badly distorted or missing. There will be a similar effect down the walls and it may be necessary to take vertical images of these with the camera mounted as high as you can get it and pointing horizontal and over the same point as the vertical image, then use the front panel vertical shift to move the image up to the top to obtain the best coverage of the wall section of the fresco, and take an image. These should then be in the same scale as the ceiling images.

 

This means many images to stitch together, (3 x ceiling + 8 x wall) and would produce a final image as a form of cross with the wall sections laid out adjacent to their sections of ceiling.

 

Marking a point on the floor directly under the centre of each cupola and using a plumb-bob would help getting everything lined up.

 

If using multiple flash and the ambient light isn't to great or can be switched off, then try leaving the lens open and gently covering it with a black cloth or paper cup painted black, between exposures to minimise any camera shake.

 

If you aren't using studio type lighting, then using two or 3 small flash units mounted on tripods and multiple flashes set off either by another camera, or manually and the flash units linked either by wires to a central point or triggered by photo cells to fire simultaneously. Using a digital camera with a lens that gives similar coverage to that on the 4x5 will allow you to see what effect the lighting is having, and whether there are any hot spots, dark areas that need to be corrected.

You may need to take several sets of spare batteries for the flash units like Sony, or Duracell or similar. Some local brands can leave a lot to be desired.

 

Another word of warning. You need to check on taking such equipement into India, their customs people are on the look out for anything they think is commercial. Make sure you know what's possible and what you can take in as personal belongings, and try to make sure you get them to enter them into your passport and stamp/sign it so that you can take it out of the country again if you don't look like a tourist.

Also be very careful with your equipment, India is a poor country and this is expensive equipment, just be generally aware and don't leave things lying around.

 

I hope you have a good trip and get to photograph many other things while you are there.

See my comments under Anonymous ratings.

Surely the real answer is to wait till you have a fair number of ratings to see what the average is, before deciding what others in general think of your image(s), some people may love it others loath it, and some just pass it over. Also the length of time over which the rating builds up should give some idea of how often it is rated rather than passed over.