chazfenn

Not like a Leica is. They are going up a little as they become "collectable" instead of "old". By way of a comparison I bought several as "semi-disposable" rough duty cameras for caving photography. Back in the 70's I paid £24.99 for a brand spanking new one!

Concur, its a Zorki tarted up to look like a leica. (image is from Wikimedia commons) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Zorki_with_Industar-22_f3%2C5-50mm.jpg

Like most specialty lenses they don't make good jack of all trades. The 55 micro is a GREAT macro lens, but too short for good portrait work.

I love the lights, sweet! I'm thinking very inexpensive flashes in my setup, the whole trick is to keep it both physically & financially viable. ;) Ringlights: an old trick. mild ND gels (2X max) covering part of the ring to slightly unbalance the utterly flat lighting.

I'm with Ben on this. If you are confident show it! You don't need fancy-schmantsy to take good images, & it you can't all the gear in the world won't make them better.

It depends. You don't have to rent in Paris, being a major city it's pretty expensive. You don't say where you are, so this is a tad generic. Rent from a REPUTABLE place where they have good pricing. (shop round). Get the insurance add on (as long as it covers you in Paris (CHECK)). Now go to The City of Lights & shoot up a storm, you;'re covered at the best available rates.

True, but Toys! Toys! Toys! :D One thing I did previously was build exactly this setup for plant scientists, who weren't & didn't want to become photographers. What they needed was a generic "point & shoot" close up system a complete novice could use for high quality detailed planet close ups. The short macro zoom & 2 small flash brackets worked very well for these non photographers & at a decent cost as well. (& this was in the days before auto-focus & programmed TTL flash!) they could literally open the carry bag, turn it on, slip the frame round the bloom & fire the shutter! Its not all about equipment, but equipment sure helps! Finally to the O.P. you might want to peek into the "MACRO" sub-forum for all sorts of information as well.

I'm going to make this a little generic, as opposed to recommending a particular optic. I think you may be confusing yourself a little with regard to terminology & use. A good portrait lens is usually something about 1 1/2 ~ 3 times the length of a "standard" lens. In 35mm equivalents it would be say an 85~105mm possibly as long as a 135. There are a few reasons for this, some optical, & some personal. The perspective of 1.5~ 2X std lenses are "neutral" that is to say they don't exaggerate or distort facial features. Personally they're less intimidating to the sitter as they are a bit further back & not so intrusive. OK we have a portrait lens defined. "Close up" is a misleading, but sometimes accurate, term. Many "close up" images actually aren't close at all, but the show detail of a small area magnified. There are many good lenses out here with "Macro" & maybe even "Super Macro" settings, these allow for "close up" magnification,but from further away, hence the correct term "Macro". You specify flowers, in this case you don't actually want super close up as flowers have quite a bit of depth & so you'll actually be contacting & maybe disturbing the petals as you get really close. Then add the problem of lighting a close up shot. You can't (at least not without something like a ring-flash or macro flash setup specially for this use only.) because the camera & lens is creating its own (comparatively) HUGE shadow! So now we've defined a better macro setup as well. One that allows us to back of 3~6" lets say while getting part of a single bloom filling the frame. Lets combine them & see what we're looking at. A short to medium zoom lens with a good "Macro" & "Super Macro" setting that will auto focus with a Nikon mount. That's a very common type ( because it is so versatile) & the range of choices is huge, but at least you have a specific optical set of parameters. A quick look on B&H photo's website found 210 "Medium zoom with macro for Nikon", so you have plenty of choice, just pick & choose what fits your budget & is comfortable to use! OK, Flash. Item A#1: Get it off the camera's hot shoe or built in unit! Nothing on-camera will do this well. (Except ring flashes/macro-flashes which are a specialty item themselves, but not really suited for portraits.). My personal preference is a pair of small, light dedicated units that will allow swivel & bounce. Tiny possibly even. You do not need bug, bulky heavy high power for shots at 2~15"! You'll want to be using small apertures for depth of field, so anything that will let you shoot at f16 or better at 1'6" should be perfect balance of power, weight & bulk. You'll need some kind of bracket to hold both flashes, which is your choice, but ideally it will allow one to beat lens height, but offset to one side a little, the other on the opposite side & offset less but higher up. You've basically hunk a tiny set of studio lights on the lens! (Now you see why bulk & weight become important!) This image was taken with just such a setup. The rose is a "tea rose" bout 2" across. It was taken from about 6" away.

True. The deciding factor here was the suing for costs as well as the copyright infringement. Without the client paying for those it would have been a losing proposition financially even if I'd won, The amount sued for was a multiple of the actual billing cost as well, another standard of any contracts. This would have been true, particularly as the client's head office was in Brazil & I was in the U.K. at the time.

When you're starting out you take anything you can get. Also I was able to sue for costs & so on. No, in the long run I much preferred smaller customers, but the volume of progress work & standby fees for 24/7 doing damage work was too good to turn down. At the end of the day I was out of the hole with about 2/3rds of what I'd have gotten if they had actually paid on time. It was a reduction in losses. Any cash I can get back liquid is an advantage in my mind.

Its really easy to dismantle a lens & clean it. Its much, much harder to reassemble correctly.

Seldom if ever IMO. I was trained in "The Business of Photography", I specifically looked for a hardcore business & science oriented course. My favorite bit of legalese (included in every contract I ever used) was "Copyright to be released as per (agreement details) upon payment of invoice". (I had some big clients & they were always the slowest & worst payers). One after exhausting every other possibility I sued for copyright infringement as they'd repeatedly published them bot in house & in trade papers!

This is slowly becoming a classic case of a collision between the art & the business of photography.

Yes the older stuff is supposed to "make Windows 10 Unstable", but oddly enough the original software from my 8 year old FinePix S7000 works fine, but the "newer, mo beterer one" from my S9100 wont even load!

OK, back to normal now Phew!

Fuji did offer such a suite once, but it seems to have completely vanished now as I'm looking for a copy too. They Fuji website has the upgrades for the package, but without the original (unobtanium) version that was bundled with the cameras you won't get it to load. You need to have a photographic "Indiana Jones" find : "CD-ROM "Hyper-Utility Software HS-V3" or "Hyper-Utility Software HS- V3UP" can use this updater." Then install it so you can run the updater. Good luck.

Still in the minutes range here. Bueller? . . . . Bueller?

For me its restricted to here. I go to several specialty forums daily & the others seem about normal.

But at least now we get the "humping caterpillar" in the top right to tell us "working on it, any day now, any day now"! *groan*

Still running response times in the minutes.:mad:

A mount adapter perhaps? Definitely not a zoom. I'm sorry but this seems to be something you are unfamiliar with & so your description is heavily flawed & your price excessive, even for one in better condition or even repairable. Not to pick, but you'll get more bites with a better description & realistic price.

AFAIK if you didn't release the copyright the intellectual property (the image) is still yours, but with the caveat of being under whatever terms of copyright he used.

Horribly, unusable slow! Lag times literally in the minutes range.

Any lenses glass should be utterly smooth, shiny & crystal clear. This seems smeared (needs cleaning) or to have multiple small surface scratches. The dent is significant for 2 reasons IMO. 1: its obviously been struck hard, how can you be certain there isn't as yet unseen internal damage as well? 2. it will no longer take screw in filters. What zoom works? This is a fixed focal length so there is no zoom per se.can you describe this a little better? I'd also quibble the listed condition. I worked in the busines for a long time & an honest description would be Condition, fair, scratched glass & chipped cosmetic paint. Filter ring dented. You'd also need to list the type of mount because it was made for many different ones. Based on other similar for sale ads this would seem a reasonable price for one in better condition. "2.7 FAST BALTAR 152mm CINE LENS C MOUNT BAUSCH & LOMB : $460"

Another possibility is the test button is stuck internally.