rookieshot said:
Always liked borrowing my friends DSLR and looking to purchase my own camera, so my question to all the intelligent and experienced members, should I just buy a SLR because it will teach me more about getting a good shot or a is that crap and just get a DSLR, thanks guys!

It's crap - Buy a DSLR and you will learn 1000 times faster. Film you have to wait for 2-3 days to see what you messed up on - DSLR you just wait 1 second then adjust and try again. Instant feedback is what DSLRs moved the whole game forward.

Always liked borrowing my friends DSLR and looking to purchase my own camera, so my question to all the intelligent and experienced members, should I just buy a SLR because it will teach me more about getting a good shot or a is that crap and just get a DSLR, thanks guys!

Gitzo said:
I give up ! When I posted this, for some unknown reason, it came up double. Then I tried to delete the bottom "copy", highlighting it and pressing the "delete" key; (didn't work) then, I just held the "delete" key down (for about 5 minutes), and it DID delete the text, but not the rest of it.

Does anyone know of an online "how to use a computer" course ?

This is what mods do.... makes us feel like we are really doing something :-)

I give up ! When I posted this, for some unknown reason, it came up double. Then I tried to delete the bottom "copy", highlighting it and pressing the "delete" key; (didn't work) then, I just held the "delete" key down (for about 5 minutes), and it DID delete the text, but not the rest of it.

Does anyone know of an online "how to use a computer" course ?

Before I found NRF, I was "accustomed to" a web site where everything was written in about the last 24 hours or so; here, "threads" go on for "years and years" ! But I will say this.........for the most part, the "people" here are MUCH nicer !

Now.......back to page 1 of this thread. A member, "Pavlov" (I believe), was talking about (three years ago) a subject that I have seen discussed many times, in various places..........how best to get our years and years of color slides onto our hard drives. My son gave me a perfectly good Nikon film scanner a few years back, (before I got around to "going digital"). ( I never "got around" to using the scanner either.)

But there IS a "better way" to do it; anyone who used to shoot a lot of reversal film will remember "slide copiers"; I have a very nice one lying about someplace, but alas, it was for Canon FD lenses, and I don't use any of them any longer.

Anyway, I believe it was on another forum where I read a very good post someone had made, about using a slide copier to hold the slide, while photographing it with with a macro lens and a D SLR; the fellow writing the post reported getting excellent results with this method, (much better than scanning the slides), which ALWAYS has problems with dust. )

My question is.......has anyone tried this ? Like most people, I have a huge collection of slides that I would LOVE to go through and digitize some of the better ones. If anyone has had any experience with photographing slides, I think there's a huge number of people that would be very interested in hearing about your experience doing it.

While I'm on this subject, I've noticed a few people mentioning shooting B&W. Years ago, when I first started shooting 35mm film, I used to shoot a lot of Kodak's VERY fine grain Panatomic X; (ASA 25) at the time, Kodak sold a "direct-positive" processing kit, and you processed the Panatomic X just like any other negative film, but then you re-exposed it with a #2 photo-flood lamp, (or am I getting this mixed up with processing Anscochrome and Super Anscochrome color reversal film ?) we used to do both, but it's "been awhile" ! It developed "positive" rather than negative, then you cut each image apart, and mounted them in cardboard "ready mounts"; the results were far sharper than almost any Kodachrome slides. Again, does anyone remember this, and has anyone ever had any experience doing it ?

All of these posts about shooting large format..........at one point, a friend and I had a fine old Crown Graphic 4X5 camera; talk about "beautiful, sharp images"! (and hours and hours of time spent, not to mention it took an hour to take 2 or 3 pictures, what with all of the "loading" film carriers, inserting the "dark slide", then doing everything over again, in reverse order, to take a picture!)
I seriously doubt that I'll ever get "hooked" on doing "large format" again ! ( and I can only imagine doing all of that with 8x10 film, (or even larger) !

kyoshinikon said:
Grain can be faked in digital but the effect is not the same. Film has a softness to its grain wheras digital grain is akin to the static screen on tube televisions with stark blacks and whites amiss the grain...

I am still a bit baffled by the terminators disappearance... Maybe we will see him in the future...

Yes, on the grain...The "effect" of natural grain in film is due from the thickness of the emulsion I think. And this is difficult to reproduce.

In view of the suddenness of NikonDoby disappearing, I can only think it was either a severe medical event which has prevented computer use or the final day and Niko is no longer with us. Niko remains a legend on NRF. All of my investigations have been for naught. Niko's email does not reject the messages but I get no response.

I have been shooting with a minigraphlex as of late and was surprised to discover that it can facilitate 120 film... More choices!

Grain can be faked in digital but the effect is not the same. Film has a softness to its grain wheras digital grain is akin to the static screen on tube televisions with stark blacks and whites amiss the grain...

I am still a bit baffled by the terminators disappearance... Maybe we will see him in the future...

msmoto said:
So, what I have seen after my first ever attempt at introducing grain,

I use the Nik Silver EFX Pro software for B&W conversion. Much better results than ding it all manually in my view.

In another thread, you can see I said I am about to start on a CLA type project on a 120 film camera (its even a bellows/folder type). Lord knows if it'll work and I'm even less sure about not breaking it. Not worth sending it away as it is worth about $50 to $75 or so...

I am with you bjrichus... Got to playing around with an image taken with a little P & S. Here is the image:

And the 2000 pixel where on can see the difference:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fantinesfotos/8136281499/sizes/o/in/photostream/

So, what I have seen after my first ever attempt at introducing grain, is, the image resolution with digital is IMO much higher when the digital image is recorded. I believe this is due to the aspect of the sensor having no depth or thickness while B & W film has a thickness which in effect causes a loss of resolution. OK, so this might get something started... and as our beloved NR Admin stated at the opening of this thread "There will be blood in this forum... please keep it civilized. Thanks!"

NikoDoby said:
I still prefer using E6 film but now mostly only in 120. The newest Portra 160 and 400 films from Kodak are amazingly good though!

Re-directed here by MsMoto ... only to discover that our beloved Nikodoby is now well into Lomo toy cameras. At least we now know why he isn't here anymore!

(It's a joke - I know he wrote 120, not Lomo and all the other reasons why MF film is better etc or not better etc).

Thanks for all the feedback. Unfortunately I was "encouraged" not to take any pictures as the Venue made money from selling the pictures on the night. They had one main guy with 3 assistants and those brought/flashed somewhat serious gear were politely asked to limit their shots to their individual tables and no group shots with the lucky couple. But I do appreciate all the feedback, and learnt that even the groom asks you to shoot for them, one need to check with the venue principles as it is their money earner after all.

Another idea is leave the heavy lifting photography to the main shooter and just do general candids. (table group shots, wedding cake, dancing, etc) Bring the D7k, the 20 and the 35. That will work for most everything. You wanted to go light, that's LIGHT.

Leave the heavy lifting of portraiture to the main shooter. You can work the crowd while the main shooter is busy with the wedding party just after the ceremony.

Remember to say, "Hello everyone!" when approaching a table and try not to get them eating. Nobody looks good in a pic when they are scarfing down dinner or wedding cake. The beginning of the reception when people are just seated is a great time to float from table to table and group to group before they get situated.

Since you are not the "top dog" and he or she is likely to resent your presence because they fear you will take money out of their pocket if the couple don't buy some of their photos since the couple will have yours, I suggest you will not be given "good positions" from which to shoot. Each good shot you take is one the pro may not sell. You may sort of have to grab what you can get from where you are in order to get a shot of what is happening at the time. Thus, I suggest reach and fast glass will be most important. Hence, take the 85mm f1.8 and the 35-37 f2.8 with the D7000 body or if you are taking two bodies put the 85 on the D200 and the 35-70 on the D7000. The reason is simply to give you the best chance for framing from wherever you have to shoot from, which I expect will be from some distance away.

Hmmm hard choice out of your lenses...personally I would probably go with your zoom for a single lens option. If multiples is an option I would go for the 14-24 and 85 F1.4.

If it were me I would shoot my 17-55 or equivalent since I am not the main photog and would let me use just one lens.

Really just depends on which focal length you think you are going to be using most...the speed of the lens will be negligible as you will have to just get the ISO up for the right shutter speeds (if shooting available light). My two lens suggestion will give you a little more flexibility in a zoom and fast prime.

are you going as a second photographer or as a guest?

if you are a guest, just take the two zooms

Here are several threads on wedding shoots... I also changed the name of your thread to make it a "new" topic.

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=2198

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=7476

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=2386

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1631

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=2843

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=1292

And, in contrast to what R8R has suggested, I would use the 35mm f/1.8 on the D200 and the 85mm f/1.4 on the D7000. Shooting available light is apparently what you are doing as you have not mentioned any flash or other lighting equipment.

Just my opinion here - I would take the two zooms and the 85. Don't bring all the primes, weddings go by too fast to constantly change lenses. Keep the 35-70 on most, the 12-24 for tight indoor shots and groups, and the 85 for portraits.

Make sure to do a custom WB on a grey card from the start.

If you do get the D600, bring the D7000 with the 35mm stuck to it as backup.

I am attending a wedding over the weekend and will take pictures as backup (there is an official venue photographer). I would like to travel light and as I just upgraded to a D 7000 from a D200, I need your advice on the subject.

I have the following lenses:
AF-D 20 mm f/2.8, AF-D 35-70 mm f/2.8, AF-S 14-24 mm f/2.8, AF-S 35 mm f/1.8 DX, AF-D 85 mm f/1.4 IF.

The wedding is at night in an indoor Venue with florescent lighting. I am also fighting an urge to stop buying recently released D600 ;-)

Thanks in advance for all your comments

Cheers

Umit

I still prefer using E6 film but now mostly only in 120. The newest Portra 160 and 400 films from Kodak are amazingly good though!

I do agree on the Kodachrome extinction as NOT meaning film was dead. Another thing I failed to mention (maybe) is that I stopped using chrome films and switched to negative films. Part of that way way better latitude. Part of that was way better offerings in negative film. In large format I switched to negative earlier than I did in smaller formats like medium (6x6,6x7,6x9,6x12, 6x17). In 8x10 and up my switch to negative film was almost mandatory.

heartyfisher said:
for me nothing unexpected besides having to do mental maths as my lenses were of different apertures and the camera couldn't get down to iso 50 :-) .. my maths is not good so I decided if I were to do this often I would write a phone app to do these calculations for me :-) then I had to decide which phone to get that had the nice enough development kit to make the task fun. of course by the time I looked in to that and decided on an android phone, I had to investigate the best tools for my linux PC to do that. In the mean time I decided to rebuild my PC to install windows 7. For that I had to investigate the whole new bunch of harddisks now available and deciding if I would go for a SATA3 or a sata2 2TB disk.. so ... still have not written my app yet! LOL!

Oh my god, that's funny, hearty!

for me nothing unexpected besides having to do mental maths as my lenses were of different apertures and the camera couldn't get down to iso 50 :-) .. my maths is not good so I decided if I were to do this often I would write a phone app to do these calculations for me :-) then I had to decide which phone to get that had the nice enough development kit to make the task fun. of course by the time I looked in to that and decided on an android phone, I had to investigate the best tools for my linux PC to do that. In the mean time I decided to rebuild my PC to install windows 7. For that I had to investigate the whole new bunch of harddisks now available and deciding if I would go for a SATA3 or a sata2 2TB disk.. so ... still have not written my app yet! LOL!

Drab said:
So, back to the query which started this, I use my digital camera as a "Polaroid" for my 35mm film (B+W negative) camera all the time. It's accurate enough and since the head and tail of film are more forgiving I wouldn't see any minor error anyway.

Thanks for your reply!

Drab said:
The problem I see (please correct me) is that one would need to test with subjects in zone 3->8 to stay in the most linear part of film's response. And since most people calibrate their negative development to zone 5, how much are you going to see? I guess that's really a parallel point. A film's ISO rating for the portion of its dynamic range captured by digital is very dependent on development processes/times. Unless we're talking zone 5 gray targets shot at rated ISO and developed with the manufacture's rated developer at the exact rated time and temp, the "rated" ISO is off.

Exactly! Well-said, Drab!

All I wanted to know was a gross estimation of how closely Zone V would "match" on both media, given identical ISO ratings (e.g., ISO 100-400). I'd assume they'd be similar (at least for that zone), but since I've never done it before, I thought I'd see if anyone experienced anything unexpected.

Paperman said:
My suspicion is more lens specific ISO boost as previously discussed in forums.

A simpler test would be to mount any non-CPU lens on a digital camera w/o physical aperture coupling and lie to the body. This would prevent the Nikon firmware from "correcting" for anything. Using a revering ring is probably the easiest way for most people. Then you can perform the identical test on a film body and on a digital body. Both shot in manual mode, of course. Controlled lighting situation, no meter.

The problem I see (please correct me) is that one would need to test with subjects in zone 3->8 to stay in the most linear part of film's response. And since most people calibrate their negative development to zone 5, how much are you going to see? I guess that's really a parallel point. A film's ISO rating for the portion of its dynamic range captured by digital is very dependent on development processes/times. Unless we're talking zone 5 gray targets shot at rated ISO and developed with the manufacture's rated developer at the exact rated time and temp, the "rated" ISO is off.

I have to agree with you Drab as I initially stated that a clash between hand held meters ( which come from film times & SLRs ) and DSLR's metering would be unacceptable .

My suspicion is more lens specific ISO boost as previously discussed in forums. If anyone here had a 300/400/600mm fast tele lens , he could do the comparasion on SLR & DSLR bodies and let us know :-)