fmueller

I would highly recommend the 55-250 STM. It's a bargain, and it will do just fine for airshows, as will your camera body. This was taken with an old 70-210 USM on a Rebel XT. I've replaced the lens with a 55-210 for the IS.

GIMP: Perspective distort, crop, select sky (fuzzy select tool), curves on selection, invert selection, curves on new selection, scale image.

And what do we learn from this story? When you are sued by a large organization, write off your losses and move on with your life. I've had to do that myself, and I know other people who eventually had to as well - after loosing more money than they could afford. There is no point throwing good money after bad. If the dude had let it go, he would have made a modest amount of money, and would still be OK. It's trying to win the law suit that ruined him. Regarding Wikipedia, they followed the letter of the law. The law might be ridiculous, but that's not their fault. I will continue to use and support them. Regarding PETA, they are extremists and nutters. Those are people you don't want to mess with. Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and the pig likes it.

GIMP: Curves to increase contrast, desaturate, crop to square format, clone out some remaining houses.

The HTC m8 is my first cell phone. I have no reference for comparison. But I was surprised by the difference software seems to make. My phone runs with LineageOS, and I have Open Camera installed. The difference between the results I get using this software compared to the camera software within WhatsApp is like day and night. I have another open source software installed, which is Photo Editor. I can't believe how powerful this program is. It even has a rudimentary version of curves! It's not like you can do serious photo editing on the tiny screen of a cell phone, but if you want to do a quick touch up before sending a photo off, this program can do more than most anybody will ever need!

Well, if you shoot a TLR, you start of with a square image. I've done that only for a short time, because back then the film and development cost was prohibitive for me. Composing for square format is difficult for most people who are used to compose rectangular images. I guess if one grew up shooting square, it would be the other way around.

Passion for photography? Yes, I get that. Passion for what medium to use? Not so much.

Norman, many thanks. I am still amazed what one can get out of a sensor that small.

Rangitoto Island, HTC m8. I only just got my very first cell phone.

I hadn't visited PN for quite some time. Maybe years. And here we are. Still debating film versus digital. What a hoot!

Congratulations on fixing your camera. I know next to nothing about electronics, but have used manual focus Minolta cameras for many years, and with the later ones that had some electronics, this capacitor issue was very common. I wish I had been able to fix mine myself, because I spend a good deal of money getting them fixed. I can't imagine how many of them went to the landfill just because this capacitor had given up the ghost. And for what it's worth, the X-9/X-300 is just about the most basic and plasticy of the manual focus Minolta lot. For a real treat, get yourself an XD-7/XD-11, or an XE series camera. Those are really nice to use, and cheap these days. If you can find an XD series camera with a faulty capacitor, you can probably get it for free. ;-)

> So I'm not even that sure they'll beat cropping Wouter, neither do I. I get a feeling nobody knows, or at least it's not as easy finding this information online than I would have expected.

Andrew, I think you have given me the explanation why the digital zoom in camera is so much worse than simple cropping in post processing. Presumable digital zoom scales the image up after cropping, and that degrades quality much more than simple cropping. I knew optical zoom could not be better, but I was surprised to find it so much worse. There don't seem to be any decent reviews of these auxiliary lenses. People make lists of the 10 best lenses for cell phones, which contain anything from fish-eye and macro over tele to a polarizing filter. That's like making a list of the best tools and rating a screw driver next to a fork lift. Tele lenses seem to range from 2x all the way up to 18x. There are 2x lenses for $100, and 18x ones for $10. I think anything 8x and over might suffer from serious vignetting, and like the old T-mount lenses, they are reasonably sharp at the center with a steep fall off towards the edges. Presumably the 2x lenses offer the best quality, but I won't spend $100 on one. Maybe for $25 I would give it a shot. My phone has a 28mm equivalent lens. A 2x converter would give me roughly a good old standard lens, which would be nice. There are also 3x converters that would make a nice portrait lens with my phone camera. Birthday is in a couple of months! If anybody working on the learning section of Photo.net is reading this, a decent review of the optical qualities of auxiliary lenses for cell phones would be sure to find a large audience!

Hi Fred, yes I hear you. For many years I have shot slide film with an old Minolta and a 50mm 1.4. It was all I had, and I've got many nice shots from this time. You had to take what you got out of the camera. In many ways, the cell phone is better! I guess I was mainly trying to justify buying yet another gadget. ;-)

So I finally got a cell phone. I was holding out to be the last person on earth to get one, but my brother thwarted my plan by giving me a HTC M8. Having started with film and a Minolta XD-7, today I have a 7D and a full set of EOS lenses. I also have a little Lumix, if I want to travel light, but I expect to have the cell phone always with me. I am no newcomer to photography, but I am keen to figure out the whole cell phone thing. The camera is actually quite nice, but the digital zoom is terrible. It's so bad that it's always going to be better to crop later than to use the the tele zoom function in the camera. I've seen that auxiliary lenses for cell phones are available. The lens is pretty wide, and the macro capabilities are good enough. If I need more, I can always take a proper camera. But the tele is awful. Should I just keep on cropping, or would it be worth my while to look for an attachable tele zoom lens? It would have to be small, so it can rest permanently in a pocket. If I want to lug gear around, I won't rely on the cell phone. Does anybody have experience with this and can make some suggestions?

Some of my photos have received comments that are old - made a few years ago. After finally finding my galleries in the - new to me - PN software, I clicked on the comments, and nothing happens. What do I need to do to see the comments? I am using Firefox Quantum (57.0.2). Many thanks

GIMP: Curves, light USM

GIMP: curves to boost colors and contrast, crop, light USM. I struggled with the crop on this one, but I am really happy with the bottom left corner now. I think it adds to the overall diagonal composition. .

GIMP: rotate 1.5 degrees - the houses seemed to be slightly leaning, crop, curves to boost colors and contrast, burn foreground concrete - the brightness seemed to draw the eye away from the subject, light USM.

GIMP - curves to boost contrast and colors, light crop - didn't like the umbrellas, light USM (2.0, 0.2, 0) Once you bring out the colors, the water holds more foreground interest than I initially expected.

When WW2 era 120 medium formal film gets too hot in the sun, can it melt, or become soft and sticky, and clump together? It might seem like an odd question, but there is some background to it. My granddad on my father's side got drafted into the Wehrmacht, and took a camera with him when he served on the western front in France. When he came back, there were no photos. The reason that was always passed along in my family was that he left his backpack with all the film in the sun, the film clumped together, and he had to toss out the entire mess. Of course as a kid I believed this, but now I am a chemist with some experience in polymer chemistry, and I know that some polymers can do that, but most won't. It's also awfully convenient for all the pictures from a war to disappear, that the photographer would rather not want to have been in. As a side, note, my granddad later became a prisoner of war in Russia. At that stage he had left his camera at home, which is why I now have it. When he came home, people in the village did not recognize him, and the doctor gave him weeks to live. Thanks to the tender loving care of my grandma, he pulled through, and happily lived well into his 80s. My grandparents lived in the same house with us. I knew my granddad well, and we had a very good relationship. In all my life, I never heard him say one bad word about the Russians. He nearly starved to death, but so did the Russians after the war, and my granddad said they shared whatever little they had with the prisoners. Whenever questions came up about what the Germans had done, my granddad ended the discussion with one short sentence: "Germans are bad!" But be that all as it may, at this stage I am really only interested in the material properties of vintage film. Will it melt in the sun or not? Does anybody have experience with this, and does my granddad's story check out?

My first SLR was a black chromium plated XD-7. After Minolta introduced the AF system, MF equipment eventually became very affordable. Over time, I acquired at least a dozen cameras and prime lenses from 16mm fish eye to 400mm tele. The system was affordable, and a lot of fun to use. You can learn a lot about photography by shooting prime lenses, and having to think about every image before you push the shutter release. Being so affordable also allowed me to experiment with lots of different macro equipment, specialty lenses, a multiple flash setup, and so on. It took a long time before I switched to digital - around the same time Minolta sold the AF system to Sony. I went to Canon EOS, and have not looked back. I will never sell my first XD-7, and I have kept a few lenses, but the rest had to go to finance the digital system. To be honest, I have not taken a single film shot since I got the DSLR. Most of my images end up on the web, and I really got tired of scanning. I used to shoot slides, and they too are collecting dust now. I share and look at my images on the computer. I really wouldn't know what to do with slides or negatives now, other than to scan them.

I am using the Cullmann system as well. It's quite popular in Germany, but as far as I know, nobody makes L-brackets for this system. That's why I have never had one. I've always contemplated making a DIY variety. Maybe on some rainy day! If somebody from RRS is reading this, do not bother making one. I wouldn't buy from zealots anyhow. Of course business owners can spend their money on whatever they like, and so can I. Addendum: For the Cullmann system, you could start with something like this, and add two Cullmann mounting plates. Not as elegant as a custom plate for your camera and an Arca Swiss tripod head, but it should work.