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Sorry I know I am boring (another lens ?)

Gary,

If you're going off-brand, check Sigma and Tamron.

Joe
 
Garyi, don't assume you need AF. Yes, it's convenient and fast but you still have to make it work for you. It can easily focus on what you don't want. Take Joe's pictures earlier, no reason not to pre-focus (and for that matter sort out depth of field and shutter-aperture combination) leaving you only to concentrate on composition. It all depends what you're shooting.

I realise your VF may seem to make this harder. Example though, if background light was high from a window etc. Joe's daughter might easily have been underexposed. Same principle would carry across shooting other topics. AF sensors in camera body could easily be off-subject and focus there. Of course, with digital you've got instant play back so maybe not an issue but I think we all assume automation is great and then start to realise it can actually get in the way.

There was a programme on a while ago and I think it was a French photographer around 100 years ago who had a wonderful and unique style. I think he was confined to heavy, tripod kit, probably bellows and very limited range of adjustments. Nothing as sophisticated as a box brownie. I wish I could remember his name. Somehow, he had shot various actions shots of people in mid-air or running and I just watched this programme in awe wondering what he could have achieved if he had the kind of kit our Fathers or Grand-Fathers were 'lucky' enough to have available if you see what I mean. These are the kind of things I find inspiring and the best reminders that a lens, a shutter release and the brain in gear are pretty much all that is needed.
 
Thanks GB, I'm not sure. The picture I seem to recall was the back of a country house, steps leading down a level, hedge on either side. I though he had captured some action there too, in fact I thought he had shot a lot for work in street-style too. It wasn't so much the series of images in Eadward's style but just the impact of individual pictures captured. It could have been someone else unless there's access to a lot more of Eadward's work to check.
 
I think you are referring to Jaques-Henry Lartigue, there was an exhibition of his work at the Hayward Gallery in 2004 and I later saw some of his work in the Monroe Gallery Santa Fe.
 
Gary,

Going with primes is generally the best option if lens speed, sharpness and contrast matter a lot, but if you want real wideangle glass for your D50, you may be forced to buy a zoom since there aren't many reasonably priced ultrawideangle primes available. Remember that with the 1.5x crop of Nikon's D-SLRs, all focal lengths effectively shift toward the telephoto end, so you need a very wide lens to get the equivalent angle of view that, say, a 20mm or 24mm lens would have on a 35mm film camera. Case in point: The widest lens I have my 35mm camera is an 18mm Nikkor, but on my digital camera that lens gives an angle of view equal to a 28mm lens. It's still wide, but obviously not ultrawide.

Here's a review of the zoom contenders, written by Ken Rockwell, the "Captain Kirk" of Nikon reviewers -- he's over-the-top, a bit of a clown but apparently gets the chicks. It's worth a read but take everything he says with a packet of salt.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/digital-wide-zooms/comparison-intro.htm

I'm tempted by the 12-24mm Zoom-Nikkor, but with the digital camera I'm taking people pix about 95% of the time, so I can get by just fine with the primes I have in the 35mm to 105mm range.

Joe
 
joe.

if the concept of a saggy box has somehow acquired value among men interested in women then i guess it's not altogether impossible to imagine ken rockwell (in spite of a convincing porn-star name) getting any chicks worth speaking of.

then there's the fact of his ultra-pedestrian photography and supremem bad taste in web-design, which after all is a visual art too...

vuk.
 
I will read his review, for now though I have chosen to keep the stock lens as it drops down to 18mm and presumably because it came with a digital 18mm means 18mm? I sure hope so, it goes the widest of the lenses I own anyhow.

I have this digital masterclass by andy rouse now which seems to be an interesting read, although perhaps a bit off kilter for what I wanted, he seems to be trying to convince me 'A film user' to go digital.
 
The focal length of the lens is a physical characteristic of the lens, so your 18mm lens is always an 18mm lens, no matter whether it's attached to a film or a digital camera. The results that you get from it though are equivalent to you using a 27mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

The 1.5x multipier is entirely due to the D50 having a physically smaller sensor than a 35mm film image and has nothing to do with lens design or the fact that it's being used on a digital camera - if your D50 had a differently sized sensor, the multiplier would be different, and if it had the same size sensor as 35mm film, there'd be no multiplier at all. The lens still projects the same image size, but all the information around the edge of the sensor in the D50 is ignored, whereas it is recorded in a film camera. You can think of taking the shot with your digital camera as like looking through a toilet roll tube, whereas with a film camera it's like looking without the tube. If you took pictures with the same lens on a 35mm film camera and your D50 digital camera, the projected image on the film/sensor will be the same size, but only the information in the centre of the shot is recorded by the D50. If you created prints of the same size from these shots, the one from the D50 would appear to be larger or closer because it has cropped all the peripheral information included on the film picture. If you took a photo with a 35mm film camera with a 27mm lens attached, it would be the same as the one you took with your D50 and 18mm lens (ie 1.5x). To get an image equivalent to that taken by an 18mm lens on a 35mm film camera, you'd need to put a 12mm lens on your D50.

Heath
 
"To get an image equivalent to that taken by an 18mm lens on a 35mm film camera, you'd need to put a 12mm lens on your D50."

And a bank account like Richard Branson...
 
Gary,
I will read his review, for now though I have chosen to keep the stock lens as it drops down to 18mm and presumably because it came with a digital 18mm means 18mm? I sure hope so, it goes the widest of the lenses I own anyhow.
This has been answered several times in this thread and others. You have to keep up, lad -- or, at the least, read what we write.

---------------------------------------

Vuk,

if the concept of a saggy box has somehow acquired value among men interested in women then i guess it's not altogether impossible to imagine ken rockwell (in spite of a convincing porn-star name) getting any chicks worth speaking of.
Here's the Captain in his element. Surely he's a man to be envied, not mocked.

Joe

1275RiptideBIG.jpg
 
Sorry Joe, yes I remember you saying.

Hah he looks a bit of a berk though.

Now then here is a picture I took today, its pretty crap but shows up an issue I am having very clearly.

When there is a small DOF the back ground instead of blurring out nicely does this:

101132630_cfb4f62f24.jpg


Does this come down to a crap lens, or is there something I am doing wrong?
 
It does not do it on all shots, but does do it often, I would just like to be able to control it more, but am unsure what the issue is. It was F5.6 and shutter was 1/320 iso 200
 
Derek Wright said:
I think you are referring to Jaques-Henry Lartigue, there was an exhibition of his work at the Hayward Gallery in 2004 and I later saw some of his work in the Monroe Gallery Santa Fe.
Derek, that's the chap, I recognise his name. Thanks.
 
gary,

Does this come down to a crap lens, or is there something I am doing wrong?
That's the telltale sign of a lens with crap bokeh -- little doughnuts for highlights instead of rich, creamery butter backdrops ... Mmmmmmmmmmm rich, creamery butter. Sorry, nothing can be done but to sell the lot and buy a Leica M body and a couple of primes.

Which lens did you use?

Joe
 
Derek -- It's a uniform drab coloured sludge! You need some edges and highlights -- heck at least something -- in your background for it to show lens bokeh and about all I would say about the background in this picture is that it's ugly.
 


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