gilbert yu photography

How close do you want to get? The 50mm f/1.8 can focus down to 1.5 ft. I shot the following image with it.<div></div>

I have used both uncoated and multicoated Hoyas in addition to coated and uncoated B+W filters and find that the multicoated Hoyas are a pain to clean. Like others have mentioned, if you get any little bit of grease on them, it is really difficult if not impossible to get off with just your breath and a microfiber cloth. I found that Formula MC works pretty well to clean the multicoated Hoyas but because of the trouble cleaning them, I stopped using them and only use multicoated B+Ws these days which are easy to clean.

Great advice here:

http://bythom.com/support.htm

Ken,

 

Yes, getting a faster CF card will make a difference for the D70, but only if you fill the buffer. I find that when I shoot RAW with my D70 and a Sandisk Ultra II, I can shoot at 3 fps until I fill up the buffer, and then 1 fps when the buffer is full. With a Lexar 16x card, I can shoot 3 fps until the buffer is full and roughly 0.166 fps (one shot per 6 seconds) when the buffer is full. So, if you find yourself filling up the buffer, getting an UltraII might be worth the extra cost.

 

Rob Galbraith did an extensive test on CF card speeds with many cameras:

http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6816

 

-gilbert

Over the last couple of years, Nikon seems to continuously have rebates. As soon as one set of rebates expire, another set takes its place. However, the lenses and bodies that are included in the rebates and the rebate amounts have varied. Over the 2003 holidays, the F100 had a $200 rebate; now it is only $100. Also, during the 2002 holidays, they had DOUBLE rebates on rebateable lenses! During that rebate it seemed that nearly all their lenses had a rebate. I ended up picking up four lenses (including the 105mm macro which had a $150 rebate!) during that time.

 

Nikon seems to have the best rebates during the holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Years), so if you can wait until then, that would be the best choice. If you wait to see what Nikon's next rebate offering is when the current one expires, I bet it will be pretty much the same as the current one.

I have a CP990 that I don't use a whole lot anymore, but I'll try to help. I'm speaking from memory, so when I get home and try the self-timer modes and correct this post if I have anything wrong.

 

Self-timer mode is only available in manual focus and macro focus mode. However, macro focus mode does NOT limit you to only macro focusing; the camera can still focus from a few inches to infinity. When in macro focus mode, it may take a little bit longer to focus because the camera searches from macro to infinity to achieve focus lock. One really annoying thing about the self-timer is that it doesn't try to focus until the END of the countdown, so you need to have the subject that you want in focus on the active focusing sensor.

 

I don't believe that you can change the self-timer to anything less than 10 sec in the menus. However, when you are in self-timer mode, the first time you press the shutter release button, the timer starts counting down from 10. The second time you press it (before the timer has counted down to zero), the timer jumps to 3 sec.

 

I hope this helped...

Here's a nice tutorial by Moose Peterson:

 

http://www.moose395.net/f5/af.html