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Posted

Had a chance to do a bit of serious shooting for the first time in a while yesterday, here's one that I ended up liking:

p422055692-5.jpg

NIce. What were the EXIF info?

I kind of like the vignett effect that blends into the cloud line..

Posted

Dinny fredmiranda.com has a lot of good people. Very helpful as well. No articles that I am aware of but if you look at the photo critique section yOu can pick up a lot of stuff from the suggestions people give to others.

Posted

Awesome, Jon, as usual. How far away were you?

Good question. I had the 70-200 at 200 mm with 2X TC MkIII on, and the photo has probably 30% cropped off, so I was a good distance away. I wish I knew what kind of bird this was..

Posted

got a roll of black and white ilford iso 400 film from amazon today and took a few pictures with my mom's old minolta af eii rangefinder. it is a fixed 35mm plastic bodied point and shoot camera with a mechanical winder. can't find any info on it online other than it goes for 10 bucks on ebay. anyone have suggestions for where I can send the roll and get reasonable big scans (bigger than 1200x1200) for less than $15? sams club and walmart don't work with film anymore. the local costco doesn't do it not that I have a membership with them anyways. I have contacted 2 local cvs' and walgreens each but neither of them do film processing - they are all just printing services now it seems. I don't mind shipping stuff out and don't want prints. just clean scans to a cd or some ftp server that i can get the files from. i don't have the time to do black and white film processing myself even though it seems pretty straightforward so need some place that I can send the roll to.

given that I have no clue if the camera is still functioning properly or not I'd like to get away with the cheapest possible route for now for verification purposes. once I have the negatives I can get it rescanned with a "better" scanner.

Posted (edited)

Thanks dinny. I looked at mpix however this was discouraging sad.png

"Film is scanned at 1228x1818, 72 dpi to create 6.39MB JPEG-format files; full resolution 1228x1818 scans are available for purchase as a DVD Archive"

trolling through fredmiranda and random film forums, north coast photo services' name has come up a fair bit.

http://www.northcoas....Sheet.2010.pdf

$6.95 for better resolution (2048x3072 Pixels) scans.

Any reason why mpix would better than ncps that I am missing?

Edited by crappyjones123
Posted

Question for you guys. I am in the market for new glass. I think full frame is in my future, so I would be looking for quality FX stuff. As of now, my long term plan is this:

Nikon 24-70 2.8

Nikon 70-200 2.8 vr2

Some wide angle solution

Basically, what I'm wondering is which lens I should get first: the 24-70 or the 70-200. Any thoughts on which is more "practical"? Of course, whatever I get will be used on DX for at least a little bit.

Posted

Are you going to be shooting specific things, or environments? The more specific you're gonna get, the more length matters.

24-70 is more traditional, 70-200 is better for sports, wildlife, etc. My PERSONAL preference is a wide prime, then a long zoom.

Posted

The way I look at it is, I focus on what I shoot most. With the 18-200 on, I have a look through my photos and note what range I'm using a lot. In my case, a lot of indoor shots in a (relative to American sizes) small apartment. That means quite a bit of wide-angle stuff. So I worked out that a 17-55 (DX) for me was what I should aim for next.

A thought I've had lately is to worry less about longer zoom since the megapixel count is so high, outdoors having up to 200mm with the poorer 18-200 hasn't been of great benefit, since the quality at 200mm isn't so great. I may as well have better, shorter range glass and just crop the photos, or get something like a proper 70-300 for those situations. This is an example of where this thought came from. It's a picture of one of my students playing after a lesson we had in the park.

Taisei_Kasuga_Park_200mm.jpg

Posted

Question for you guys. I am in the market for new glass. I think full frame is in my future, so I would be looking for quality FX stuff. As of now, my long term plan is this:

Nikon 24-70 2.8

Nikon 70-200 2.8 vr2

Some wide angle solution

Basically, what I'm wondering is which lens I should get first: the 24-70 or the 70-200. Any thoughts on which is more "practical"? Of course, whatever I get will be used on DX for at least a little bit.

I'd definitely do some trial and error there. Renting (or borrowing) before you buy would definitely be recommended. If you're discussing lenses like that, and you're not sure which one you want/need, you definitely need more hands-on familiarity and experience.

All the 70-200 f/2.8 type lenses are quite heavy, and with the hood attached, quite long. Practical is not a word that comes to mind. You will look like a serious photographer using one, and depending on what you're shooting, that may or may not be how you'd like to be perceived. If you're doing posed people shots, sports, wildlife, etc it would likely be fine. For casual people pics, street shooting, or travel, a 70-200 f/2.8 is extreme overkill in my mind, not practical for those uses, and likely to get worse reactions from your human subjects.

The 24-70 is a great lens. It will be great on DX, and great on FX. I don't use it myself, because I prefer the focal length versatility and VR of the 24-120 F/4 VR for what I do primarily. If I mostly shot more people-oriented photos, the 24-70 would probably be my go-to lens, despite it's size and length relative to other FX midrange lenses. Also, 24mm is quite a wide angle lens, and it's entirely possible that you might not ever really need anything wider (considering that the point of a wide angle lens is perspective, not "getting everything in")/ Again, the size of the lens and massive hood would probably not be ideal for street shooting or other more causal shooting where people might react to you with "why so serious?"

Also, I would contemplate how much you really NEED FX. Thom Hogan's website (bythom.com) is a great resource for Nikon shooters, and he has a number of articles that are excellent for really making you properly evaluate your gear choices and their relevance to your shooting. FX, while having many great attributes, has many drawbacks. The lenses are bigger, heavier, and more expensive. The camera bodies are bigger, heavier, and more expensive. While you can get a shallower DOF, getting sufficiently deep DOF can be a problem on many shots. Primarily though, look at the weight/size/cost of a good DX system (say D7000 / Tokina 11-16 f2.8/ Sigma 17-50 f/2.8 OS / Sigma 50-150 f/2.8 OS) and compare that to a similar FX system (say D3s / 14-24 f2.8 / 24-70 f2.8 / 70-200 f2.8 VR2). The difference is staggering. Seriously contemplate how those factors would effect your use of your camera system.

I only deal with FX because of what I shoot, and how I shoot. For what I do, the dynamic range of the D700 (in it's time), and the DR and resolution of the D800 now, are paramount to crafting my images to the levels I demand. I'll eat the cost, and deal with the weight/size, even when it's time to lug that weight/size up 7,000ft of mountain and back down in one day. But many others might not feel the same way, and be as uncompromising on image quality. For some, the convenience or cost might be worth a small sacrifice in image quality, or that sacrifice might not even be present/relevant for their specific uses.

  • Like 1
Posted

^Many thanks, Peter, that gives me a lot to think about. I have rented a D700, 24-70, 17-55 (DX), and 70-200 for the weekend. But perhaps the rigth way to go for me would be the DX system you outlined above.

Posted

Ultimately it will come down to how much compromise you're willing to make, in which areas.

I could easily see having an FX DSLR rig for formal portraits, sports, wildlife/nature/landscape photography, a DX-sized mirrorless (Fuji X-Pro1 or Sony NEX-7) or maybe even u4/3 (EM-5) for street photography, higher quality casual/grab shots, and lightweight backpacking, and a larger-sensor compact (like the new Sony RX100) for take-anywhere casual/grab shots. At least that's only two lens systems to have to buy into, and pretty versatile/low compromise depending on the activity.

A DX DSLR might be a good compromise between the first two categories, giving you the AF speed and lens choice the mirrorless system lacks, while being between the two on weight and size.

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