Your Camera Equipment

Indeed. I'd buy it if I hadn't already gotten the 24mm f/1.8 by Sigma.
 
Just in:

k1866f.jpg


the nikkor 55-200MM VR, for use next to my standard 18-55MM kit lens on the d40.
 
Congrats on that purchase! I got the same combination, surprisingly good glass that. Makes nicely natural pictures and surpasses the D40 kit lens in picture quality by a margin.
 
I has my very first slr. Technically I've owned it for a week but it just arrived today.

Canon 300D
Canon 50mm f1.8 II
and some cheap battery (screw paying more for a battery than I did for the camera) and a 2gb card. Whole setup cost me a whopping $300, shipping and all. I am very frugal. :mrgreen:

It will soon have the IR blocker removed in order to do astrophotography, IR, and regular photography (not putting a permanent IR filter on the sensor). I have a 1200mm lens with 8" aperature sitting in my garage..... ok it's my brother's reflector telescope, but it should do the trick nicely for moon/galaxy/nebula/cluster shots in prime focus (aka hooking the camera right up to it, not using an eyepiece).
 
I've loosely looked into using my telescope for photography but don't really know how it all works. Any tips? Gear?
 
You need a telescope adapter thing first. The cheapest way is with just a tube with a T ring, a la this (at the bottom, the tube and T ring are both needed and are seperate). For astrophotography, if you have a motorized mount you can just plug in and go and do super long exposures, if not then you'll need to take a bunch of short exposures and stack them later. AFAIK the adapters that let you use eyepieces are utterly useless without a motorized mount. Unmodified cameras need longer exposures because of space being full of infrared light.
 
I finally got a new lens!

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It's not much but I like it.
 
Chaos said:
I finally got a new lens!

IMG_0304.jpg


It's not much but I like it.
Click to expand...
I just got the exact same lens, just for a Nikon. Now I just need the D700 to use it. :cry:
 
Grats, that a nice little lens. :)
 
Nikon D40
Nikkor 18-55mm
Nikkor 55-200mm
Quantary 70-300mm
Tokina 2x Teleconverter
Targus Tripod
 
I've been long gone on the forums lately, so I thought I'll post some of my thoughts and wonders about new lenses I've bought a bit while ago (2 months to be precise).

First up I bought a Tamron SP AF 17-50 F/22.8 XR LD Aspherical IF (Tamron has a bit of mess of a name...) to change my kit 18-55 canon non IS crap xD And it really do wonders! For example some comparative shots.

All done at F5.6 Iso 200 and 1/640.

At 18mm.

Tamron
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Canon 18-55
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Cant really see the difference on this resizes.. so a 1:1 crop of left corner.

Tamron
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Canon 18-55
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And that's a pretty Huge difference in detail!

Now on 50mm. And center frame.

Tamron
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Canon 18-55
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Now it's more apparent difference here. Some color tint seems to be there on kit one..

Now for the crops.

Tamron
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Canon 18-55
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Apart from the huge crispness and detail increase you can see even color improvements.. For me that was a shock after a kit lens.. So I really like these lens.. and recommend it =) You may see it as a mini review as you wish.

And for the telephoto lens I bought a Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 DI LD Macro mainly for 2 reasons. It was really cheap (like 100$ for the new lens) and It offered a huge zoom since it was intended for full frame use.

For a bit of a showoff you can see a zoomed in thing on the roof of the building from those 18mm shots. It's just a resize. And quality is quite bad, but much better than 18-55 kit lens. So I'm really happy with that too.

8e9e34.jpg
 
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Just needs a bit of CA correction on importing the RAWs and it'd be brilliant. :)
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again, that Tamron lens is brilliant. Wouldn't suprise me if it did a better job at f/2.8 than the kit lens does stopped down to f/5.6 at 18mm.
 
nomix said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again, that Tamron lens is brilliant. Wouldn't suprise me if it did a better job at f/2.8 than the kit lens does stopped down to f/5.6 at 18mm.
Click to expand...

And it actually does do much better job.

This photo for example was made when I was a bit drunk xD at ISO 400 and F/2.8

and it looks quite good =)
Just to throw out there there is 2 more examples from everyday life (F/8) (Read - I was asked by my parents to shoot some flowers).


And BTW some examples of my other lens (70-300) from the same everyday life xD


So this is not that bad of a lens either... especially considering it's near 110$ price tag =)



BTW I want to get not so pricey CPL filter. Any suggestion on what to get?
 
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After waffling for a long time over what to get, I've added a SB-80DX to my lineup. I was going to go with a SB-600 because it can do iTTL (D60) but as I was getting a flash for off camera purposes I decided to go with the considerably cheaper 80DX because it has a built in PC port, a great optical slave (SU-4 mode), and an integrated bounce card. I'm going to end up adding an SB-600 down the road for TTL shooting but for now I'm gonna rock the 80DX. Getting a umbrella and what not to go with it, so fun times!
 
I wasn't sure whether or not to post this in the random thoughts thread, but as this is the gear thread...

I want to try some wireless off-camera flash with my D40 and SB-600. I'm looking into some cheap Cactus triggers and receivers that are all over eBay. I know I can only use the flash in manual mode, and that's fine.

Specifically, I'm looking at this or this.

Thoughts?
 
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I got the one in the first link, except with two receivers. They work a lot better than the built in wireless triggers, which are just too much of a hassle to get working right.
 
Thanks, Ice :)

EDIT: On second thought, after some more looking, it appears that there is a new version of these Cactus triggers that, at first glance and review, is much better. I just can't find them anywhere in North America :(

EDIT: On third thought, Alienbees Cybersyncs appear to be a lot cheaper than Pocket Wizards but a lot more reliable than Cactus triggers.
 
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