paradoxbox

<p>buy yourself a printer. the old canon ipf's and i think some of the epsons can also print on canvas. you can get a 13" wide printer for under 500$ these days, or a 17" one for under 800 if you look around.<br>

bit of a steep initial investment but you'll be able to control all of your printing costs after you've bought it. it's a lot cheaper than sending it out to repro houses.</p>

<p>Take your photograph from above the person and consider making it at a 45 degree angle.</p>

<p>Taking the photo from above the person (With the lens at least at their eye height or higher) removes all of the problem shadows under the neck and just slims their face in general.</p>

<p>I basically try to stay as stealthy as possible. When focusing I prefocus with the range scale on the lens, and since my primary rangefinder is a Kiev 4 with a meter on the top, I can meter the subject while holding the camera at waist level. Then I do a final focus and take the photo quickly. Usually they don't know they've been photographed. It helps to take the photograph in a lull of pedestrian traffic, it helps reduce your visibility.<br>

Sometimes I am caught - yesterday I took a photograph of a woman who was dressed so sexily she was just asking for it - she gave me a kind of "oh brother" look, hah, and a few guys watching the situation gave me a thumbs up. Can't wait to see that frame..<br>

In the instances where someone gets angry, I usually just lose myself in a crowd or walk down a few alleys so I don't have to deal with an angry person. Shooting with a small easily concealable camera helps here, I recently acquired an old Konica C35 rangefinder just for this purpose, it fits in my pocket.<br>

If it comes down to it and there's a confrontation, just apologise and be done with it. Don't give up your film but an apology always works better than the hard-ass approach. Apologise profusely until the person goes away.</p>

<p>liquid dish soap. it's basically the same stuff.</p>

<p>Potenza RE-01R's for me :) Nothing quite like 12" wide rubber on the back wheels in summer :)</p>

<p>One thing a bit unrelated to your original query, but shooting with such narrow apertures is fairly useless for what I see in your pictures. You would be better off learning what "Hyperfocal Focusing" means. This will allow you to get everything in focus without stopping the lens all the way down to F36.</p>

<p>You see how your images have a kind of soft blurry dreamy appearance to them, it is being caused by diffraction. When your lens aperture gets too narrow it starts to bend the light which makes it look a bit strange / fuzzy in the final image. Avoid this by shooting at a max of F16 and using hyperfocal focusing to keep nearly everything in focus without losing sharpness. Only resort to F36 if you need to have both a very close object in the foreground and a very distant object in the background in focus; otherwise it's just a waste.</p>

<p>P.S. - Forget about trying to get the dust off. You will never get all of it and at F36 even tiny microscopic skin cells will show up on the image, even if you get it all off you'll put more dust right back on it when you go to put the lens back on. Fix the spots in photoshop with the spot healing tool or a similar tool if you must shoot at super narrow apertures.</p>

<p>I had the choice between a D300 and a D2X- I chose the D2X.<br>

I know some people say the viewfinder is the same, and that the autofocus is better, but I personally like the autofocus of the D2X more, and to be honest I can't see myself ever needing better autofocus than the D2X gives.<br>

The other thing that swayed me was obviously the quality at low ISO which suits my style of extremely sharp long exposures at night. The D2X is great at this, and the fantastic battery also means that I can take lots of them before needing to recharge.<br>

I like the smaller size of the D300 however I REALLY dislike the controls of it after having used it for a while. I also find I don't like the controls of the D3 that much but they are better than the D300.<br>

One thing I really dislike about the D300 is the pop up flash. I consider it useful however it is VERY flimsy and I feel like it would get broken off and expose my camera to rainwater and etc.. Not good. I'd rather pop an SB-400 on the top of my camera if I need a party flash.<br>

The high ISO of the D300 is definitely better than the D2X but I think it's a bad reason to get the camera unless you need the crop factor. If you want truly better ISO performance get a D3 or D700 which blow both the D2X and D300 out of the water.<br>

Just my opinion. I am not some super pro, I am just a guy that chose the D2X over the D300.</p>

<p>if you're thinking you're going to save money by buying a NEW camera vs a used one you're dead dead wrong. it seems like you might not be learning the lesson that was taught to you here??</p>

<p>don't buy new cameras. even with the warranty, they'll probably never fail within the warranty, and if they do fail, it's somewhat likely that the warranty won't cover it.</p>

<p>buy yourself a used camera, use it as hard as you want, and if it needs repairs, they will almost certainly be less expensive than what you would have paid for a new camera plus whatever warranty cost was.</p>

<p>one thing for sure. get insurance on your camera. if you drop it then you'll be able to replace it with something new if it's toast.</p>

<p>having that camera cleaned by a 'qualified tech' (cleaning a camera is something that can be learned in about 30 seconds..!) isn't going to help it.<br>

i think you may have gotten liquid into the electronics of that camera, but it's possible it was damaged before hand by something else.<br>

i have seen another case on the internet similar to yours where someone was shooting a laser light show and the laser light destroyed the sensor producing similar results to what you've posted.<br>

in any case it's not worth it to replace the sensor on a d80 because you can buy them used for around 400$ or less now. a repair will be more than the value of the new camera.</p>

<p>the solution to your problems is to set your camera to a 3 shot, 1 stop bracket, and put it on Ch shooting mode.</p>

<p>the next step, get your camera off of matrix metering mode, it's useless for most kinds of sports where you're using a telephoto lens or the action is centered in the frame. set your camera to center weighted metering and adjust the center weighted area to the widest available in your camera's menu.<br>

now just go have fun shooting in S or A mode. S is nice for sports because you can freeze the action. shots shot at high iso (color saturation loss/errors) and too slow shutter speeds look like crap. frankly i think the first picture is terrible because of the above combination of settings. the second shot is much better.<br>

get on S mode, bracket 1 stop over 3 shots, keep your shutter speed around or above 1/400th if possible..and try to reduce the ISO if you can get away with it, 800 will always look better than 1600.</p>

<p>i dont mean to insult your intelligence but have you made sure that any bracketing modes on the camera are turned off? and that the iso of the film is set correctly?</p>

 

<p>let this kind of thing be a lesson. messing with firmware is serious stuff. you're not just screwing around with your computer that can have windows reinstalled with the click of a mouse. if you bust your firmware or interrupt it while it's installing on your camera, you've just bricked it and have a worthless piece of black plastic and rubber on your hands.</p>

<p>be careful upgrading firmware! take your time and follow the instructions.</p>

<p>you are probably under exposing your images a little bit. expose them by a third or half stop more and see if you get better results. you may be surprised to see the noise magically disappear.</p>

<p>if you're going to buy a flash you may as well buy something cheap and keep it used off camera and use it in manual mode ala strobist.<br>

if you really need the TTL then save up for an sb800 as it really is worth it.<br>

otherwise go buy a used sb26 or sb28 in good condition for 80$, or buy 2 or 3, and have fun with lighting!</p>

<p>I find the best shooting technique with the F1.8D is to put your camera on continuous focus mode and turn the high speed motor drive on and just slam on the shutter for a series of pictures. One of them is bound to be in focus.<br>

Either that or stick to manual focus.</p>

<p>I can get you a hood for about 20$ shipped from Japan. Let me know if you're interested.<br>

They actually only cost 1,100yen here but the exchange rate is terrible these days, plus shipping and etc.. Gets expensive.<br>

I just bought one new for my used 80-200 2.8 AF-D the other day.<br>

There is another metal screw in hood that is more expensive, make sure you're not being quoted the wrong price.</p>

<p>It's meant to spread the light a little bit. Suitable for bouncing. It helps light get to the sides in addition to the direction you're bouncing the flash. It's not meant to soften shadows.<br>

If you want to soften shadows you need to use a proper light modifier like an umbrella, soft panel or softbox or something similar. The diffuser dome is not designed to soften shadows.<br>

You get soft shadows when you use as big a light source as you can as close to the subject as you can. So get your flash off camera and put it just beside your subject (just barely out of frame) behind a large light modifier. You'll get nice soft shadows.</p>

<p>The drawbacks of the 50mm prime?</p>

<p>Well it's almost useless indoors because you have to move around to the farthest wall all the time to take pictures with it on crop cameras. It's a telephoto lens on a crop camera. Good lens wide open for portraits, just make sure to nail the focus and make sure you have a good copy.</p>

<p>The other drawback? It's useless up close unless you reverse it. Minimum focusing distance is kind of far. The 18-55 kit zoom lens focuses super close.</p>

<p>That being said I still recommend having one if you want to buy only new lenses. However, if you are OK with buying used lenses I'd recommend a 24, 28, or 35mm lens for crop bodies. If you have a full frame camera then the 50 F1.8D is a fantastic lens and should be in your kit as a walkaround lens.</p>

<p>You can also throw a teleconverter on the 80-200 and get the better zoom without much of a loss in quality. Doesn't work well with the 2.0 TC though.</p>

<p>why don't you just buy an optical trigger for your sb28? they can be had for under 30$ on ebay. you just plug it into the pc port on your sb28 and that's it.</p>

<p>don't forget your sb26 and sb28 are also almost fully functional on your d90. they just don't do TTL. you can still use AUTO mode which in many situations provides results just as good as TTL does.</p>

<p>furthermore if you're going to go to the trouble of doing off camera flash why bother with TTL at all, manual is the way to go.</p>

<p>if i were you i'd skip the sb600 or sb800 and just get another few sb26 or 28's to make your lighting even more spectacular.</p>

<p>I agree with the 17-50 tamron suggestion as well.</p>

<p>I use a cheapo 18-55 lens on a D2X for safety and weight purposes (My setup gets banged around a lot, I don't want to break a heavy 17-55 2.8 nikon lens). I will be replacing it with the 17-50 Tamron because it's very lightweight, fast and very cheap - I won't cry that much if it gets banged up and broken.<br>

I tested a sample of one yesterday in a shop here in Tokyo and it performed very well all over the frame.</p>

<p>Just go with the stock nikon dome.<br>

If you want a "Fong Lightsphere" with ultrabounce 2 with extra magic sprinkles, contact a manufacturer in China and they'll mail you a sample for 20 cents plus shipping. Don't pay $100 for plastic tupperware that doesn't even come with a lid for food!</p>

<p>what you really need to do is make your sb800 light source as big as possible for macro work. put your subjects into as big a softbox as you can and crank your flash power up to 1/2 power on manual mode. full power is a bit dangerous as it's easy to overuse the flash and cause problems, plus it drains batteries quickly.<br>

try getting your flash and subject into a proper softbox or similar light modifier and see if it helps.<br>

also, at macro F stops like F22 and higher you're going to experience serious light loss even when shooting inside of a small white light box or something similar. you may want to consider adding another light if you really need to shoot at those apertures.<br>

remember that you can up the ISO on your camera pretty high without negative effects when doing flash photography. ISO 800 looks a LOT better when you have a lot of light than it does when there's not enough light. You may not even notice the difference between 100 and 800 iso when you shoot a macro with your flash. Shooting at ISO 400 or 800 will give you a lot of extra light power that might get you up to F32.</p>

<p>bring the 18-200 and the 30 1.4. if you are a telecentric kind of guy then bring your 30 1.4, the 18-70 and a 70-300. but really i think you're going to end up with the 18-200 on the camera at all times. it's a great lens. throw on the 30mm if you need a standard lens. 50mm is not a good walk around length on a d300.</p>

<p>i think anyone paying for a glorified piece of tupperware ought to be spending money on more flashes or better lenses.</p>

<p>these pieces of plastic all do the same thing. the radius of the curve on the rear side on the inside of the unit is not going to make any difference in your photographs. they all diffuse the light in almost the exact same way. just use the stock sb800 diffuser if you have an sb800. if you lost it or have a different flash buy the cheapest thing you can.<br>

the gary fong lightsphere is a racket just as bad as the sensor cleaning fluid one. that guy's built an empire for himself just with a bit of marketing, good on him.</p>