fmueller

I am a member since 2001. I remember when Phil Greenspun was still running the site himself. I had a number of interesting exchanges with him. These days I only check in every once in a blue moon. I had no trouble logging in right now, but I had a ton of photos uploaded to the site. With the change in software, I assume they are gone? Does anyone know? It's a shame how all the original Internet Forums have been sold. Photo.net is one of the very early sites on the Internet, and at some stage it had a very loyal fan community. People who hung out in certain Forums every day, and were very welcoming to newcomers. No question was too trivial to get a serious response. Just like a town square where people could hang out and discuss anything, even stuff not related to photography. Now this town square - like most parts of our lives - has suffered a corporate takeover.

If it moves and it shouldn't, use duck tape. If it should move and it doesn't, use WD-40.

24-135mm! But kidding aside, if I had just one lens, it would be a 50mm or equivalent for an APS-C camera. I only had a 50mm 1.4 from the mid 1980s up until around the turn of the millennium. After that, I built us a nice collection of prime lenses of pretty much every focal length from 16mm fisheye to 400mm tele. It was fun picking a lens, or a couple of them, for an outing and see what you can get within the limitations of that gear. But today zoom lenses are so good, and I enjoy the convenience of them. I think the switch from prime to zoom for me came with going from slide film to digital.

No idea about iPhones, but if anybody is interested, for Android I use Open Camera, which I like a lot! Operating System is LineageOS. Other photo related apps I have installed are Image Crop and Photo Editor. Image Crop I use occasionally, Photo Editor very rarely, but it's quite full featured. Curves are fairly important for me. On the rare occasion I do need it, it comes in very handy!

I have tried out a lot of cameras, especially back in the film days. I don't think I was ever really disappointed by one, but quite a few were not a good fit for me. 1. Minolta Autocord - against better advice, I bought the one with the CdS meter. The meter is so awkward to use that you might as well use a hand held meter. That would have saved me a lot of money! Also, I like to take a lot of photos to get one right. Having twelve frames on an expensive roll of Velvia was just not my thing. I never went back to 120 film. 2. Minolta X-700. I had an extensive Minolta manual focus system - XD, XE, SRT, SR. I loved them all, but the X-700 just couldn't hold a candle to the older models, especially my beloved XD-11. I later bought a X-500 for the TTL flash metering capability, but I always preferred the XD series. 3. Minolta 600si. Beautiful camera, great ergonomics, but I felt AF in those days wasn't quite there yet. I was always quicker and more accurate to focus with my XD series cameras. It didn't help the 600si that it came with a 24-85mm that was shockingly unsharp. I never worked out if it was a problem with that lens in general, or just with the one I got. I bought it second hand, so maybe something was wrong with it. Oh, scrap all that, I just remembered that I bought a little Lumix under water camera a few years back. Great underwater photos and video, even though I only held it about a meter under water with my arm. Absolutely loved the results, but it never powered back up after that very first use. That was a disappointment!

Auto flash does not work with multiple flash units. In that case you need to use manual flash. Frankly, that has always been too much of a hassle for me. When I came to that stage, I bought a X-500 and three Sunpak flash units that supported TTL flash metering, which makes this all automatic. Maybe somebody else can explain the basics of manual flash with multiple units. There will be a lot of calculations involved to determine what flash power to use depending on the distances and how much light you want to come from each flash. The 320x should be a good flash for that, because it allows you to adjust flash power. But that's all you can do in manual flash - adjust the flash power from full to 1/16. The ISO on the flash becomes irrelevant.

For what it's worth, that's a very nice camera and flash unit you have there! The XD-7 was my first SLR camera. I still have it! Regarding flash use, it doesn't have TTL (through the lens) flash metering, which Minolta introduced with the X-700. But auto flash works very well with a flash like your 320x. With auto flash, the flash unit does the metering, not the camera or you with an external meter.There is a little light sensor at the front of the flash that does this. The camera needs to be set to manual mode (M) and the shutter speed to 1/100s (X). If I recall correctly, the 320x puts the camera into those settings automatically, since it is an Minolta x series flash unit. That's what the second contact on the flash shoe is for. Anyhow, 1/100s is a superior flash sync speed to all other Minolta manual focus cameras, and to most other SLR cameras of that era. With ISO 400 film you have a choice of three apertures - 5.6, 11, and 22. You need to choose one depending on the distance of the camera from your subject. The dial on the back of the camera shows you what range of distances each aperture allows you to cover. With ISO 800, the available apertures become 8, 22, and 32. If you don't have f32 on your lens, you have only two apertures to choose from. Of course the 320x will also work with older cameras like the SR, SRT, and XE series. Or cameras of other brands. The only difference is that you have to manually put the camera in manual mode and set it to the fash sync speed (usually 1/60s), because those cameras don't have the x functionality. Last but not least, you can also use the 320x in manual mode (M on the flash), meaning not auto flash. In that mode you have to do all the metering, and can adjust the flash power from full down to 1/16. But that's a subject for another day. I would recommend getting familiar with auto flash first. Have fun!

For what it's worth, I found the explanation of micro contrast very interesting, because up until reading this thread I had no idea what it means. On the never ending discussion of bokeh, I reckon it's blur, but people usually refer to blur as bokeh only if they like the look of the blur. So only a pleasant looking blur is bokeh. Of course that is highly subjective, which is why people can talk about it endlessly.

> No animals this week! ;) Oh man, just when I got a new puppy!

For me photography has always been an extension of other hobbies. I bought my first camera - a Minolta XD-7 - to take photos of trains. I've always been into aquarium fish, and eventually became the photographer for a large fish club. I also created their website, and used photos of both, fish and club life for that site. I have also created other websites, and used my photos to make them more attractive. It helps if you can produce images that are well exposed and have an appealing composition. Mostly in the composition is where the art comes in for me. I've also done a lot of traveling, and have lived in different countries. There have always been plenty of subjects for photography. But very rarely have I gone out to take photos just for photography's sake. I like my photos to have some purpose, some folks who actually want to see them other than myself. If you are not good enough, or do not want to go through the trouble of putting together an exhibition, most photos taken for art's sake alone end up in a shoe box - or today on a hard drive - never to be looked at again. That doesn't mean they are not worth taking just for the fun of taking them, but that's not my thing.

andy_szeto - My phone wants to go there too!