michael_darnton1

"Rui Marto" sounds like a good one to me. What kind of gallery asks an artist to change his name? I'd be worried about them.

The most direct answer to your question is autofocus, man. I'm totally sold on auto-everything. I know how to do it all, and have been doing it for nearly 50 years, but "manual" is not a magic word to me. :-) The glass components separate from the focus mount, and I could have worked out some way to use the lens, but I'm more interested in taking pictures than being a mechanic.

I just sold one a couple of months ago--maybe you bought mine--and went totally DSLR, but I really loved that lens, and the 85/1.8 I had before it. The 1.5 has the rep of not being sharp, but mine was great, even wide open, and the pix had a nice smooth look. And I imagine it's good in a fight, too (one big, heavy stick of brass and glass), though I never had the opportunity to test that.

The thing with the funny printed dot pattern on it is the shutter's leading curtain. The through-the-lens meter takes a preliminary reading off that pattern, which is simulating what will more-or-less be reflecting off the film when the shutter is open.

 

Can't help you with the malfunction...

I wonder what it would do with a face?

It was a while ago that I did this, so I may not be remembering exactly right, but you come in from the front, not the back.

 

The engraved name ring is glued on with four spots of glue, and pops off by prying. Behind that is a lock ring, and I think I remember that loosening the lock ring removes something(the front element group, perhaps) that allows you to access four largish screws facing forward that hold the hood on (the hood is shaped like a tin can with a hole in the bottom, and the screws are around the edge of the bottom of the can, outside the hole, but facing forwards, not sideways). It scared me a bit to go in, but turned out to not be a big deal.

 

The way it's all put together, the hood can get very, very loose before it falls off, and I think even then everything will be trapped, so you won't lose any parts, so you may want to wait until you hear a screw rattling around inside, and then send it off for repair, if you don't want to dig in, yourself.

It's not about pixels: larger sensor = less noise at higher ISO, and the ability to use FX lenses as they were intended.

Ah----here it is:

http://www.hevanet.com/cperez/test/BigMash210.html

There's a site on the web somewhere where someone explores the very question you asked and discovered that aside from coverage, which expands at smaller openings, most lenses do just fine wide open. If you do some google searches, you'll find a lot of pages about people dismantling the old wive's tale that large format lenses don't work well at their maximum openings.

I mostly use wide-angles and available light, and so I'd love to have the D700, and would have bought it if it had existed in January when I got my D300, but I'll live with my D300 for a while, and not be unhappy. What I'm really waiting for is the 24mp FX, second-string model (a D1200 or something, not a D4). That will be the one that makes me ditch the D300.

Worked fine for me, and was interesting.

CLI 8 inks and Canon papers used together are supposedly good for 100 years, under proper conditions. What's your definition of "archival" is relevant to the answer of whether they're "archival". Here's Canon's own take on it: http://www.canogacamera.com/printing_ink_canon.aspx

DPI is irrelevant. What you need to do is discover the exact size they will be on the web, in pixels, and save them at that size, any DPI. It's really necessary to get a size in pixels, not measuring units like cm or inches, which are as irrelevant on a screen as DPI (DPI and cm are both used for prints, not screen displays).

 

In the Photoshop save for web option, the tab that doesn't show first on the right allows you to designate a pixel-dimension size, and then you can also choose a compression ratio based on how much degradation of the image is acceptable vs the file size of the image as saved.

 

I recommend you start around the middle of the compression scale, and alternately click and unclick the preview to see how things look to you. With certain subjects I find that lower quality looks better, so it's worth trying different options and seeing which actually looks best to you.

Hey, your photos are great. Why do you feel like you need validation from us? Who cares what a bunch of photodorks think, anyway? That's the real question. :-)

Basically, when I shoot I don't plan on cropping later, and I don't like surprises in the form of stuff in my compositions that I didn't see and didn't plan for. It was much more important when I was shooting things like slides for artists, but now it's a habit. It's not an important issue, but many photographers take a bit of pride in getting things right when they push the button, rather than having to make them right later.

Any of the old lenses will fit, not just the AI-S series. The FM has a flip-down aperture sensor flap.

I think it's most useful in program mode, which I use all the time (having discovered that the camera makes the same decisions in that regard that I have made for the last 40 years or so).

Basically, I think this is right. The reason I bought my Nikon D300 is because some time ago I calculated the limits of the lenses, and for "half-frame" the D300 is there.

 

As far as 35mm film out-resolving the lenses. . . sure. . . if all you shot was one or two high-res films at ISO 25. But for *real-world* results, with normal film, 35mm just ain't that great, which is why I dumped film when I got my 4mp digital camera. Talking results at usable speeds, say ISO 800, 35mm is dead, dead, dead.

WD40 is definitely not the way to do it. If you want to try something no-harmful, put some wax on the wood. All it will need is the thinnest coad you can manage of something like Butcher's wax to see if this will work--more than a molecule thick will just mess things up.

All I can say is that I'm disappointed with the 28. It's really just a so-so lens. I'm on the edge of getting the 35, but wary because of the reviews--I don't want to buy another lens I won't use because it's not all that good.......

You're missing some concept somewhere. No cutting should be necessary, and focus shouldn't be a problem. I assume someone who knows the camera will pop up soon with the answer, or there's the folks at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/ you should ask.

I don't have those two cameras, but my FM has a little button near the tab that lets me flip the tab back out of the way so that it wouldn't jam on the back of your lens as the D300 would.

Most likely you can't, unless the lens has been modified, which can be done. Look for the little tab that sticks out on the camera's lens mount at around 2 o'clock, and if the back of the lens' aperture ring isn't cut out in that area as your other lenses are, it's no-go.

I ran the numbers once. I think I came up with around 24mp or so, full-frame, being the limit of what the lenses are theoretically capable of delivering. After that, I think only bigger sensors are going to do it. Whether "you" need it or not, I would be wary of summarily declaring that therefore no one needs it.

Definitely after.