clive_murray_white

<p>Thanks for the quick reply Shun - I'm a bit old school and set and forget, Single shot + and single point- though I can't seem to see it in the control panel</p>

<p>Hi all - I regularly use my D800 for low light indoor events, ISO 3200 + 85 1.8G takes very nice pictures but......................occasionally it decides, for reasons best known it, that it doesn't want to focus and then won't take the picture. Strangely if I give it a few moments to makeup its mind it works fine. Anyone got any ideas about what's happening or what can be done to make it behave itself properly? Thanks.</p>

<p>I'm late in on this thread, we have a lot of contact with a lot of fine art photographers making large high quality prints for exhibitions, many are quite content with the results they get from D800s but almost all use the most respected pro printing companies to print their exhibition work, not cheap but they've got the best gear and really know how to use it.</p> <p>But that said, most would agree that nothing beats Large Format perfectly processed and printed on top quality photographic stock by experts, whilst some of these artists are using Hassies and Mamiya 7s, the majority go for Linhof Technicas and the like. </p> <p>I'm not tempted to back to film - I find I've got far more flexibility with my D800 Lightroom etc, and think the real answer to your question lies in getting expert printers to print your project. </p>

<p>Thanks Barry - actually, though I didn't mention it, this discussion started because my friend went to her regular camera store, a very big one, they recommended Panasonic GX7, she then asked me what I thought and as quite a few other cameras seemed a better choice to me, I put the question out in this thread. Next time she goes there she'll be armed with a lot of helpful info. </p>

<p>No Shun my friend isn't actually participating but checking-in on what everybody has to say, whenever she gets a moment between two projects involving fairly difficult communities. She thoroughly appreciates the comments so far.</p> <p>Related to Eric's comments - In addition to what people have said here I suggested that she makes a concerted effort to see how well she copes with the shift from DSLR viewfinder ......by "playing" with her phone I think when you've had a lifetime of work with SLRs and then DSLRs adjusting to this very different way of working/seeing may cause you some distress.</p> <p>Phil - for my last driving holiday I thought I should load the car up with pretty much my entire Nikon kit, my big rolling camera case weighed more than my clothes and when it came to using the camera somehow I always had the wrong lens on it! I also took my little Fuji X100....guess what got used most for "holiday snaps"?</p> <p>In truth I'm not a holiday snapper.</p> <p>My friend almost exclusively uses a good fast 50mm lens and keeps a quality standard zoom handy if she really need to go wider or longer. </p>

<p>Thanks Brad - great work and very helpful in this discussion. Barry I used to use all sorts of legacy lenses on my 43s stuff and enjoyed it immensely, old Zeiss and Leica R mainly but was pretty handicapped by the crop factor (50mm in effect becomes 100mm) OK for portraits but lousy at the wide end.</p> <p>It is actually an important observation that you make Brad as phones are everywhere and everyone could be a "journalist" if they happen to be in right place at the right time, but I know my friend wouldn't like the impositions that phone cameras make on the photographer's range of options, particularly those that have anything to do with separating subjects from backgrounds.</p>

<p>Shun I too find very small cameras uncomfortable to hold, do you think it was so badly made or compromised in some way that we should take it off the list of potential suggestions. It struck me that with a fastish prime or 2 it could be very competitive.</p> <p>When I moved over to Nikon D800 I started with light 1.8Gs and though the plastic made me feel a strange the image quality was outstanding.</p>

<p>Yes Andy, I noticed that it was very much a consumer grade offering, its really annoying how both Canon and Nikon make it very clear to their customers that cheap must also mean unnecessarily nasty. I guess that it encourages people to "upgrade".</p>

<p>I've just had an idea, dangerous I know but... sometimes people describe their needs inadequately i.e. in this case by mentioning the word "mirrorless" when in fact they may just be feeling the need to have a smaller lighter camera. Not being particularly familiar with the Canon product range I did a bit of a search and stumbled across their tiny DSLR the SL1/100D and got the impression that it was easily as good as many of the cameras mentioned already on this thread or am I missing something?</p> <p>It seems that Canon designed it to go pretty much head to head with mirrorless.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone - Shun you are right I can't ever remember seeing anything of hers taken with a long lens, I'm also beginning to think that APS sized mirrorless may be best, I suspect she's on a fairly tight budget.</p> <p>Indeed Lex it does seem that you and my friend share many of the same "interests", her long term camera store is recommending Panasonic GX7 but I'm a bit suspicious of it, yes it seems like a reasonable performer but m4/3 sensor size worries me with printing etc, my personal choice at the moment seems to be Fuji XE-2, but I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Fuji colours and lens rendering.</p> <p>Again my view is, from what I've seen, the Fuji takes the best looking pictures.</p>

<p>I thought I should add a few helpful things about the photographer and how she goes about her work, most of the work she receives is from such places as our state library to document specific communities. She tends tends to pose people/groups in an appropriate context, using available light. The destination for her pictures is in publications, on-line and printed (often A3 and larger even though her current old 12mp Canon is quite stretched doing this) for exhibitions.</p> <p>Action photos are rare. Her logic in moving to mirrorless is her age, some arthritis and the weight of her current gear.</p>

<p>thanks everyone - so here we are in the Mirrorless Forum now, and I'll be searching through other similar posts but all opinions are most welcome.</p>

<p>A documentary photographer friend has just asked me for some advice about mirrorless cameras and since moving from Leica M and Olympus E-3 to Nikon D800 I've lost touch with 4/3s etc.</p> <p>I guess many of you are dual system shooters and may have good opinions about which mirrorless system to recommend. I do have a Fuji X100 which takes very nice pictures, is great in low light, is a bit clunky to use and of course only has a fixed 35mm equiv lens - I'm guessing but the competition is really only between Fuji, Panasonic, Olympus and Sony isn't it? </p>

<p>Thanks Pete, I think you've completely got it with that explanation</p>

<p>Intriguing Jim - there is a back story to all this, we had a bad storm 2 or 3 weeks ago which resulted in water getting into the plaster board ceiling in my office causing it to collapse, naturally I took pictures for the insurance guys. In the process of clearing up the mess I got the idea to redesign the layout of this office so I thought I'd use one of the insurance photos (@15mm) as a basis for a Photoshop/Indesign drawing, but, you guessed it, I found that the perspective lines didn't lock-in with sufficient accuracy for me to create a reasonable digital "artist's impression" of the modified space.</p> <p>And, that instead of both left and right perspective lines meeting a single point they had the same kind of "error" as shown in the pic above.</p>

<p>Thanks Don, I think I get what you are saying...... if I'd lined my camera up on the exact mid point of the room, (the hanging light fittings) and square with both the room divider and far wall the perspective lines would be far more likely to line up.</p> <p>Going back to my art school days we were taught multi-point perspective as a formal geometric discipline, and in this pic, according to the theory all the horizontal lines would converge/meet at points along the horizon line/ vanishing point whilst the verticals on a single north south axis.</p>

<p>Maybe someone can explain this for me - in this quick demo picture you see all the perspective lines on the right (yellow) roughly lead to a single point, as they should - but the red lines on the left, neither meet at the same point as the yellow ones nor meet at an obvious point.</p> <p>Sigma 15-30mm @ 15mm.</p> <p><img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10885287_881722091860507_7078091932627494146_n.jpg?oh=0df2aba057b65e519fcca54d5008648a&oe=55333D34&__gda__=1430391180_f0d528ea19e68cabb759b53e4146e0d9" alt="" width="716" height="478" /></p>

<p>Nice list Bela, thanks, you've just reminded me that I'd better bookmark this thread before it disappears off the bottom of the forum page.</p>

<p>Thanks Andrew - I appreciate your most amusing link I can just imagine a wedding photographer using something like a still version of that monster Fujinon 25-300mm T3.5 (after doing some serious body building at the gym).<br> <br> In truth I think Nikon "accidentally" made the 24-85 G VR a little too good, if you get my drift, a sort of repeat performance of "E" ? lenses. Just a pity that they didn't think of a super zoom lens for the 600D and again make it better than what they expecting to sell it for.</p>

<p>I took this pic at a friend's daughter's wedding on the weekend with my 24-85 G VR (hand held no VR) - it got me thinking, in relation to this thread...............are there any FX super zooms that with a bit of Lightroom lens correction and tweaking that could become contenders for a one lens really does just about everything?</p> <p><img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10698642_857717210927662_9037464503861670422_n.jpg?oh=6eab7cdaa44ca8b2b5378895d6f1177b&oe=55124027&__gda__=1427956987_6759a77c307dfc71fa2bfaafd531ef15" alt="" width="850" height="567" /></p>

<p>Hi Martyn, I kind of guessed that the use of RB lenses on Nikon would be underwhelming....and our currency has dropped so much recently that buying outside Australia just doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment. Good luck with your sale. All the best, Clive </p>

<p>Thanks Albin, After your post I went looking at these lenses and was mightily impressed by the 55/3.5 from what I saw on Flickriver, here's a Photonet link discussing it.</p> <p>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/007S5z.</p> <p>And here's one for the 400 also looks great.. that's if you've got a use for it</p> <p>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00XHF7</p>

<p>Chris thanks - You are probably right re: Peter's post in terms of my original question but by my way of thinking a lot can often be learned by loosening the boundaries around any topic, it is very interesting how passionate and misty eyed people can get when the older primes get discussed.</p> <p>Albin - Thanks, the reason why I started this thread was that I'm relatively new to Nikon, coming from Leica M and Olympus, to a D800, so FX is my main interest, so I'd be really interested to know if you think the lenses you've listed are really good, and why and maybe give us a few links to back up your reasoning</p> <p>............or other forum members could chime in with stuff like <em>the 55 micro is great/ is awful/would better if</em> type comments.</p>

<p>Thank you very much indeed Peter, perfect example of this forum, a finely detailed in-depth piece that is bound to be very helpful for many people studying this topic. Thanks again, good on you, Clive</p> <p> </p>

<p>JDM von Weinberg - I should have got back earlier about your post + link, but my partner just got elected mayor for our district (the same size as Jamaica) so I've been a little distracted - what struck me most, in terms of this topic, was the amount of CA in both lenses, which of course can be instantly fixed in Lightroom.</p> <p>Thanks Dan for the porn, Df with old lenses - most engaging.</p>