ray_chang2

The kit lens is not too bad.

Here's some pictures with 300D, kit lens wide open, ISO400, and no tripod from last saturday. The first two are resized and perspective corrected, last one is 100% crop.

Is there a way to fake out a EOS camera body such that the focus

points would light up with a screw mount lens?

It seems the camera body can figure it out without any input from

the lens, it is a matter of shorting out some pins? The DRebel view

finder is not the greatest for manual focus.

Thanks guys, a lot of good suggestions.

I'm thinking about getting the Russain Hack and a 420EX now, FEC and a swivel head sound good. For people not too familiar with the 300D Digital Rebel, be aware AI Servo works well only in Sports Mode (ISO 400 only), in One Shot mode, AI Servo kicks in at a random time while you're recomposing. I hope the Russian hack solves that problem.

I used the Tamron 28-75/2.8, a really good small lens for about $330.

Thanks Mark. It sounds simple, but it never occured to me to figure out the optimal offset. Perhaps the offset wouldn't be constants in different lighting conditions, but that's still way better than what I was doing.

Normally, if I was taking pictures of a bunch of kids running around in the snow, I would just use the P mode and +1.5/+2 stops and concentrate on shooting instead of thinking about exposure all the time. I just couldn't get any printable images with the dog yesterday.

All with similar problems:

www.TheChang.Net/storm05

(These are examples of failure.)

Thanks for the answers.

The reason I started using the flash was because of the high contrast condition yesterday, it was not easy to get any texture out of a dark dog. In fact, without the fill flash, I got black holes for eyes most of the time. (This one was also back lit.) Anyway, when I post processed the monitor image to what I thought was reasonable, it became un-printable because of the blotchness in this case. I do agree it is over done. I also agree I should have used Av mode more instead of the idiot mode P. But again, I have to give up the fill flash (because the camera would set the shutter speed to 1/200 automatically) and rely on good natural light.

Actually the P mode is not always stupid, I have to admit (gievn my skill level) most of the time it makes decisons as good as mine. With the 300D, the AI Servo seems to work reliably in "Sports" mode, when I said a better EOS body, I meant a high flash sync and AI Servo one can control. (The AI Servo does works in One Shot mode, however, it only kicks in 2 seconds after focus is aquired, not easy with a moving dog, this is probably the number one reason for 300D users to upgrade to a better EOS body.)

What is the best way to photograph a moving dog in the snow with the

300D?

I know it's not easy, I normally set up the camera for 2 stop over

for snowy scenes, but that's not possible with the sports mode.

Using the "P" mode, I can only get decent pictures with the built-in

flash (max speed of 1/200 second) and it is too slow to capture a

moving dog. This picture is one of the better ones, still I have to

stretch out the histogram like crazy. I'm not sure you can see it in

the downsized jpg, the dog is all blotchy and a shade lighter than

she really it.

I know I can get a better body, I just want to improve my batting

average without getting new equipment. Would I have better luck with

grey card metering and manual flash? But I'll still have the slow

sync problem...<div></div>

After my Panasonic died, I got a $199 Canon a300 at Wal-Mart about 3 month ago. Best value if you don't need a zoom lens.

Here's a (medium quality jpeg) sample, the original 3mp is probably good enough for a decent 8x10.<div></div>

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear, Art.

I meant white bablance is great. I've taken some OK pictures in mixed artificial lighting that I might have a hard time with a film camera.

Thanks for the answers.

Yes, the original image was modified in Photoshop. The 5 minutes I spent on each picture were used to desaturate, adjust curve to give it some toe (I'm ashame to say very heavy handedly), and a little bokeh by gaussian blur. The reason the sweater looks different is my magnetic lasso went nuts in the middle of the selection process and I didn't bother to fix it.

I didn't try to simulate b & w filtering or dial in some film grain, but you can see in Scott's version some film grain does make the image pop. I don't know what's more artificial, digital manipulation or Tri-X film curve, so I really don't have a point to make here.

This my 1st digital and I only bought the camera last week because the words "leica lens" were on the box (and the price). It's disheartening in many ways for a film shooter like me. To be honest, a picture taken with any camera hand held at 1/30 sec has about the same amount of info as this low end digital (which for some reason lets me shoot at lower speed).

Mani, thanks for the kind words but I'm afraid Henri might not like this camera because of its shutter lag (about 1 sec?) and the 5 sec between shot time.

I was told Office Max also sells this camera for $200.

-Ray

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Panasonic Lumix-20 with vario-elmarit zoom lens.

$200 2MP digital camera at Walmart. (Apparently they can't give them

away, marked down to $200.)