rsands

<p>I have a black LabX, and have had some pretty good luck with her by following a couple of simple rules. I won't clutter this thread, you can see them in my portfolio if you want. </p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photos/rsands</p>

<p>1. Get her tired. Not exhausted or even close, but tired. Helps with posing. I've learned when she is in the mood or not, and I have a good idea of how tired I need to get her.<br>

2. Bracket aperture to get the focus and DOF I want.<br>

3. as well as #2, put the camera into multishot mode and take 5-10 at each aperture.<br>

4. Running shots - shoot from the side. I agree it's almost impossible to get a good running-at-you shot. I've done it, but it was luck. See #3.</p>

<p>The only other thing i can think of is that I almost always shoot in RAW so I can use PS at its most flexible to bring up the black levels, play with the shadows, etc..</p>

<p>Been away for a couple of weeks, but have gathered about 2000 shots I can work through! Here's one from early in the day in Amsterdam. This is the Singel canal.</p><div></div>

<p>Yacoub, great sense of the atmosphere that day - love the shot.</p>

<p>After a run in the park on a beautiful fall day, Her Highness was a bit beat.....</p><div></div>

<p>Favorites so far today:<br /><br />Robert Premkumar - great colors<br />Hamish Gray - outstanding image, great contrast (although I am NOT happy you're reminding me it's coming back......)<br />Dieter Schafer - very nice, can almost feel the waves breaking at my feet</p>

<p>Here's one of the fall colours near my home.....</p><div></div>

<p>Later to the party than usual, here's a shot from downtown San Francisco from a trip out there last week.</p>

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<p>Someday, southern Ontario will get sunshine again. In the interim, here's one from a couple of months ago. Friends and neighbours at the border between Sarnia, ON and Port Huron, MI.</p>

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<p>One more vote for a card reader. $15-20. </p>

<p>Here's one of a couple of the other residents of the house.....</p><div></div>

<p>KeithO - wow!<br>

Andrew - great focus. Beautiful shot.<br>

MikeC - jawdropping. Absolutely jawdropping.</p>

<p>Mine is from a trip to Stratford, Ontario. After a play dropped into a local bookwright's cottage, got this shot of him holding gutenberg-ish type with tool for creating woodcuts in the background. He creates all of his own stuff, from paper - and even ink - on out to weaving the covers for the books.</p><div></div>

<p>Richard, you beat me with the hummingbird (great shot), but I'm posting mine anyway 'cause it's the best thing I got this week!</p><div></div>

<p>Joining the 'birdbrains' this week, a shot that I cropped the livin' heck out of to see how far i could go. This is about 1/16 or so of the original frame.</p><div></div>

<p>What's up? Or down? Or over there?</p><div></div>

<p>Jamie, very cool moth pic.<br>

Here's one from a ride a couple of weeks back; still waiting for my D90 body replacement. This is an interesting view of the QEW near Toronto, with some 'vintage' light standards replicating the originals from 1930.</p>

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<p>Mark, I doublechecked and you are correct. Could have sworn I saw mine do that. Sorry to all for bad info.</p>

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<p>Matt, my understanding of what Adobe Camera Raw (PSE's RAW converted) is doing is that it will in fact read the camera settings (e.g. Vivid), but applies its own interpretation of what Vivid means. May be a close approximation of what Nikon's algorithm is, maybe not.<br>

It will show up as that (e.g. vivid) on the camera calibration tab of ACR.</p>

<p>Thanks for the feedback, everyone.</p>

<p>Jerry - it's been that kind of summer, but I have had no issue with fogging or related that I am aware of.</p>

<p>Raden - I was having a related discussion with my better half about an upcoming boat trip; I think ye olde point-and-shoot is coming out of storage for that one.</p>

<p>Jason - I agree. I never format externally; I read the pix from the card using a reader in my computer, review them, copy the pix from there to another external drive, then reformat the card in the camera.</p>

<p>Looks like just one of those things, and makes me happy I bought the extended warranty. I usually don't, but chose to in this case as I had little experience with higher-end digital cameras.</p>

<p>I haven't seen this raised often for the D90. I see it was a common issue with the D70, but not the D90.<br>

Green LED indicating memory card access blinks constantly if SD card and battery are both in, even if camera is powered off. Tried different SD card, same result. Only have one battery at this point (yes, it's is at the top of the to-buy list), so can't try that. Tried different lenses, same result. Can't reformat using the 2-button approach, only through menu. Can't reboot using the 2 green button approach.<br>

Battery will die in about 12 hours if I don't pull it.<br>

Just curious if anyone has more info on the topic. It's not a killer issue for me as the camera is still within the retailer's OTC replacement period, and they've agreed to replace it (just waiting for new stock mid next week). </p>

 

<p>Here's a snippet from my screen showing typical settings I use in PSE.</p><div></div>

<p>Or open in Elements, then select File/Save for Web. It will whine about the file size being too big, ignore that. Once open in the new window, you'll see abunch of options over on the right, including # of pixels high/wide. Do what you need, click OK, saves the shrunken JPG to wherever you want. Doesn't affect the original.</p>

<p>Great stuff as always. Hasn't been a very productive week picture-wise, so here's something from a couple of weeks back. Was out for a ride and saw this mass of black-eyed Susans, and liked the color match of the honeybee.</p><div></div>

<p>Adding $.02 from a rank amateur, the 70-300 VR is outstanding. I'm thoroughly impressed with its sharpness, even full out at 300mm, and even in some lower-light-than-ideal conditions. All the shots in my gallery as of today were shot with that lens. I've attached one in particular.</p>

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<p>The bar is certainly high this week. For a change, here's something that's not a bee/dog/other animal.....</p><div></div>

<p>Wednesday morning has become one of my favourite times of the week. Great shots.<br>

Bill Boyd - nice saturated colours<br />Shun - great capture of the pent-up power<br />Monika - nice character study<br />P Watson - could look at that for hours<br />Jon Eckman - I'm still laughing<br>

Some of the bug shots make we want to run out and buy a macro lens. Too bad Christmas is so far away. Anyway, here's one from a bike ride on the weekend, saw a garden and stopped for a few shots. This little guy was happy to stay put for quite a few shots.</p><div></div>

<p>Favorites so far this week:<br>

Greg Kowalczewski - nice detail on bird<br />Gej Jones church - great composition<br />Julie Rhoads - seahorse - phenomenal colours<br />John Mita - somehow, I think I know what the dog's thinking<br />Rick Dohme - cactus great perspective<br />Roberta Davidson - wow!!</p>

<p>Here's one I did on the weekend, first 'fruits' of our labours.....wish I'd cleaned the dust of the table a bit better - sigh............</p><div></div>

<p>Have used Costco quite a bit, would agree with the comment that they are acceptable to very good, but not great, quality - and super-cheap.</p>