ukpa

<p>Sidecar racing on Sunday at Donington Park, shooting the Birchall Brothers for their photo stock. A900 and Sony 70-400mm G</p>

<p> <img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00S/00SxfJ-121715584.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="642" /></p>

<p>Great stuff, Wayne.</p>

<p>Peter said it all, so nothing left for me.</p>

<p>Nice to see you're getting to grips with the camera after your troublesome start.</p>

<p>Bill</p>

<p>The kit lens is not good. There are a few good, used Minolta lenses regularly on Fleabay. 24-85mm is good, (I have one I use as a backup) and it's a lot better than the kit lens. The 28-135mm is also reputed to be very sharp. The small beercan, 35-70mm, you can get very cheap ($60) and it is a nice lens.<br>

Take a look at the lens database on <a href="http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/index.asp">http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/index.asp</a> which has every Alpha fit lens and user ratings for each.</p>

<p>Hi, Wayne,</p>

<p>Settings for horse were 1/400s, f/8, 120mm</p>

<p>A900 was ISO 200, AF Spot, Exposure Spot, Creative style Standard, Contrast +1, Saturation +1. WB warmed up a little in PP.</p>

<p>Shot RAW and processed in Capture One Pro</p>

<p>I've had this lens for a month or so and I've yet to find something it can't handle. Here are some results using this lens on an A900. All are handheld. The Server has squeezed the images a bit, but you can find the originals in my Portfolio.</p>

<p><img src="http://europeanpressagency.com/Races/Race8.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://europeanpressagency.com/Prey/Peregrine2.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://europeanpressagency.com/Prey/Meerkat3.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://europeanpressagency.com/Air/Air5.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://europeanpressagency.com/Greylag2.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Have a look at the Minolta 100mm f/2 (if you can find one). It's small and light and the IQ is astounding.<br>

See <a href="http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/detail.asp?IDLens=73">http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/detail.asp?IDLens=73</a></p>

<p>I added a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 to my shopping basket at Warehouse Express on Friday, at £489. When I went back to buy it on Monday, it was £600.<br>

That's about a 20% rise<br>

Seems Tammy are pushing up the prices as well.<br>

It's still at WE :)</p>

<p>Apart from the pros and cons of each camera, and there's nothing really to choose between the higher end cameras, it comes down to who you feel comfortable with for the future.</p>

<p>One of the reasons I chose Sony was I'd worked with Sony equipment in video and it was always astonishingly well built. Sony have dominated the TV broadcast industry for decades.</p>

<p>Sony are third in the global SLR market at present, but Sony don't like to be anywhere but first, which means they will go the extra mile to keep their user base happy and attract others into the fold. I think that the next few years will be interesting and a good time to be a Sony SLR user.</p>

<p>I gotta have the last word :)</p>

<p>Sony say you can get up to 800 shots from a standard battery. I get around 5/600 per battery with a fair bit of chimping. You should manage that with your hosses in good light.</p>

<p>I'm leaving now. My work here is done :)</p>

<p>Most users say that the A900 is best on landscapes and portraits, but I've used it on birding and streets without a problem. You just need a fast enough lens. You can batch produce images in most of the RAW converters, but the SONY and Adobe converters do a poor job of developing Sony RAW. I've tried them all and I have settled on Capture One Pro, although Silkypix is good, too. Both have one month trials, so you can download and play with them to see what suits you best.</p>

<p>If you don't need the high pixel count, the A700 is very good at high ISO and has good AF tracking. It may be worth investing in an A700 body for sports/action work and using the A900 for high quality landscapes and portraits.</p>

<p>The A900 is a superb camera and once you get to know it's little idiosynscracies, you'll love it. There is a rumour (isn't there always) of an iminent firmware upgrade to address the IQ at higher ISO's as was the case with the A700. If SONY get that sorted, then it will be a superb all-round camera.</p>

<p>It sounds very much like a Noise Reduction problem, since the well lit parts of the image were OK, and we all know that Sony's NR in-camera is less than perfect. Too much colour NR produces blocky colour. Add some sharpening of the resultant NR into the mix and you will get what you described, I think. </p>

<p>I turned the NR off on the A700 as soon as V4 firmware was released and I have it turned off on the A900. I don't have any in-camera JPG experience as I always shoot RAW. However, doing PP to recover dark areas at high ISO has produced exactly the kind of problem you experienced.<br>

Also, when shooting sunrises over the coast where the sea is reasonably dark, I have noticed the it takes quite a few seconds to process the image, even in RAW.</p>

<p>Wayne,</p>

<p>When you took the shots did it take a long time for the camera to process and write to the card? Depending on your jpeg setup, a combination of NR, DRO and compression can take a long time to process and produce poor images. It would also explain the drain on the batteries as CPU processing is power hungry. Did you take any RAW shots of the same subject?</p>

<p>Bill</p>

<p>The conventional wisdom is that glass is a better investment than camera bodies as lenses hold their value more than bodies, which quickly get superceded.<br>

Investing in a CZ 24-70mm will give you a big jump in image quality over what you have, much more than keeping your existing glass and buying an A700 body.<br>

Also bear in mind that the trend in cameras is moving towards Full Frame, so make sure the lenses you buy are suitable for FF for futureproffing.</p>

<p>You need to find a lawyer who specialises in this kind of work. Getting an internationally registered trademark would cost many thousands of dollars and is a very long process (years).<br>

In the UK, it takes about a year and costs around £1,000 (based on the last time I looked into it 2 years ago). This includes search fees to make sure the trademark doesn't already exist.</p>

<p>The process has to be repeated for every individual country.</p>

<p>However, you can put TM after your logo now and it might deter anyone from using it. You don't have to have a registered trade mark to do this.</p>

<p>Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to give me some answers.</p>

<p>I see two equally valid points of view, but both coincide in the short term, so I'm going to keep going with the across the board approach for a while until one subject somes to the fore, either from an interest point of view or some as yet undiscovered natural ability is producing better images from that particular subject. At that point, I can look at the economic advantages or disadvantages of specialisation and whether it is a sustainable approach to paying the rent.</p>

<p>Bill</p>

<p>"Since the title of this thread is <em>Street Photography in the UK</em>, how many people here that actually <em>do</em> (rather than talk about) street photography in the UK concentrate on snapping the police as part of their street photography activities? "</p>

<p>Well, she is rather pretty ;-)<br>

<img src="http://europeanpressagency.com/Beercan/Cop.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I recently returned to photography after an absence of over 20 years and in the last six months, I've been sorting out the technical side of taking pictures and getting the gear together. I've been pointing the camera at anything which is in my field of vision, with no discrimination.</p>

<p>I've got to the point where I'm happy with my technique and kit, so it's time to start getting creative. Do you think that specialisiation in a particular field would be preferrable to continuing to have a go at anything and everything?</p>

<p>The reason I ask is that it's getting harder to think of things to go out and shoot. If I specialise, I may get better focus on a particular subject.</p>

<p>Has anyone else reached this crossroads, and what did you do?</p>

<p>NOT ONE COMMENT ON THE BASIC ISSUE!</p>

<p>The basic issue is <strong>censorship</strong> of the media. If the police can arrest photographers and videographers covering any event at which police are present, then they are severely limiting, if not compromising entirely, the ability of the media to report on events which the authorities may decide are 'not in the public interest' to be published or broadcast.</p>