Wildlife in My Back Yard...

Good pic. It would make a nice wallpaper !

snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

I think you might be impressed with the newer metering modes. Nikon has a color 3D matrix metering mode, as well as center-weighted average, and spot. And on the spot meter mode, you can select 1 of up to 51 spots in the scene to meter, depending on which camera you have. And those same spots can be used for predictive focusing.

My walkabout camera is a Nikon D-90. Link:

krw: try that with an old film body camera.

Not necessarily true. Digital cameras have the ability to focus manually and there are several situations in which manual focus is preferred. But that doesn't mean is preferred universally. (For example, the predictive focus modes I've already mentioned)

But for manual. Yes. Glass, as you've mentioned. But also scenes that have poor lighting, poor contrast, shooting with certain filters, or scenes that are very uniform in appearance. Some digital cameras have infrared illuminators built-in (either on the camera body, flash attachment, or both) to assist the focus in poor lighting conditions.

Change the words "any" to "many" and I'll concede the point for B&W. However, with a few simple keystrokes in post-processing, the difference becomes negligible, in my opinion.

I find the same is true with the "Pano-Merge" feature in PhotoShop Elements. With enough overlap frame-to-frame, it seems to do a reasonable job.

The nice thing about GigaPan (with or without the robotic mount) is that is stiches together in both the H & V directions. With Photoshop, you'd have to do one dimension first, then keep tacking on to it, row-by-row. Hopefully, that made sense? :)

-mpm

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

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Sorry to say.. the Kodachrome days are numbered. From the Kodak website:

And it won't be long before the processing labs follow suit. (All two of them that are left if you happen to shoot color side film.) I guess that means we're stuck with Fuji Velvia. ?

-mpm

Does your Olympus have through-the-lens metering? (It probably does.) And if so, performance also depends on the f/stop of your lens, + any filters, extension tubes, or teleconverters you might be using.

Comparatively few old lenses were anything like as sharp as the current generation (Leica and other high end pro Canon/Nikon glass excepted).

There are hardly any digital cameras these days that would be fooled by window glass in normal lighting. You can't do much about internal reflections inside the glass itself apart from shoot square on. And obviously any muck and rubbish on the glass hurts contrast. A sheet of black card held by an accompliss will help if reflections cannot be avoided. It was different in the prehistoric era of ultrasonics.

P&S focus locks onto the dead centre of the image by default which in the case of the first shot is the sharp lawn to patio curved edge. And in the second shot the crack in the wall just behind the bird. The other two are focussed on the bird. You should be able to get focus lock on the bird at dead centre and keep the button part pressed frame it keeping the same plane of focus.

In very low light the human eye can beat modern autofocus but these shots don't look to be pushing any obvious limits.

PanX might if you could still buy it, but few other B&W films would. CCDs will beat any film hands down for quantum efficiency and signal to noise. It is not for nothing that all professional observatories and most serious amateurs have abandoned film for all but a handful of specialist jobs.

Kind of hard to bend a CCD for s Schmidt camera or get big enough ones.

Historically you could use all manner of baking in inert/reducing atmospheres and post processing with uranium intensifiers but it was a PITA and would rescue at most a couple of stops. Shelf life of gas pretreated or hypered astronomical emulsions was very short.

HDR is pretty ugly in most cases.

Regards, Martin Brown

I guess I know who are the hawks, and who are the turkeys... But owl? Libertatian?

VLV

They knew about this long ago......................

I keep thinking, If I see a UFO out the window, I can't do a dam thing with my present cameras. I tried shooting the moon one night. With the old manual BW film camera, it would be easy to shoot, as my computer (mind) would select the right parameters very quickly.

greg

Investigative reporters. They are always asking 'WHO"! ;-)

Nice One. :-)

The liberals are always asking 'Where?', as in 'Where is your money!'

The conseratives are asking 'Why?', as in 'Why in hell would you want to do that?'

;-)

"Owl Gore"? ;-)

I was just out on photo-safari this morning and snapped a couple red- shouldered hawks. Pretty hot out, so they were in the shade and not well lit.

Unfortunately, I also discovered that for some unknown reason, my Tamron 28-300mm zoom suddenly seems to have trouble focusing at infinity. (At least, it sure looks that way on playback on the LCD.)

Mounting it on a Nikon F5, it looks sharp. So I don't what's up with that. (???) I am starting to think I need to wear my glasses more often.... Damn!

Al's more of a 'Where can I defraud the most people out of their hard earned cash." :(

I'm waiting for my new glasses from the VA. I hd the exam last week. No I just have to wait four or five weeks for them to be made.

l?

ard

k.

Well, don't feel too bad.... I plopped down nearly $300 for my first set of glasses before I realized all I really wanted (needed) was a $10 pair of reading glasses from Wal-Mart.

The $300 pair works near and far, but my complaint (at the time) was near. Things seems to be going downhill rapidly now, so maybe I'm better off?

Getting old is a bitch!

Over the counter reading glasses don't work for me. My vision has always been poor. :(

Art Linkletter said it best: 'Old age isn't for sissies!'

Nonsense. The crap today is dinky glass. Nothing compared to the stuff found on Canon and Likon of thirty years ago. "Pro" stuff, my ass.

It does, though.

Get real. Now you're talking about cryogenic imagers.

Sure.

Of course. That's sorta the point. It's still a *lot* worse than the SLRs of thirty years ago. Of course my Canons have far better lenses too.

I suppose you are entitled to your opinion, but the magazines of the day would show otherwise. Modern aspheric optics machining and new glasses for APOs are beyond anything the 1970's lens designers could dream of.

You are a Luddite.

Obviously the consumer end of the market is made down to a low price. But these days almost every mobile phone has a 2 or 3 Mpixel camera built in and their image quality isn't all that bad.

It shouldn't, and didn't in this case. The shots shown were focussed on objects in centre frame near to but not in the same plane as the bird. This strongly suggests centre weighted contrast based focus - dead centre of the image is in focus. The patio plant close to the window was well out of focus.

Even the humble DSLR will simulate 3200ASA film somewhat better than the analogue equivalent and with no reciprocity failure. You are a Luddite.

From an astronomers point of view having CCDs is fantastic since they don't share the blind spot to the bright green OIII nebula emissions of ordinary panchromatic and colour films.

Regards, Martin Brown