[clevermax]

Originally Posted by Aroy

Digital lense is formulated to achieve focus in one plane. Colour film had three layers (how ever thin) so each colour was focused on a separate plane, not so with digital sensor.
.

I don't know how far this argument makes sense. In most of the shooting conditions, we have DOF deep enough so that the focus plane moving towards or backwards by few microns won't hurt much.

Do you mean to say that the film lenses are made considering the requirement that each color should be focused on a layer which is separated from each other by few microns?

Most of the Minolta lenses are sharp and has great colors. They work great on DSLRs - you can read user opinions on the net. No one actually tells that the glass is bad when it comes to sharpness or colors or whatever. In fact, the saying 'Old is gold' naturally comes to mind after using these great glasses.

I have two Minolta glasses and they are really good at producing tack sharp images in my entry level DSLR. In fact, they are a class apart from the crappy kit lens given by Sony - which is made for DSLR. Check out two sample images which I took with the Minolta lenses. First one with 50mm and the second picture is of the 50mm taken with the beercan, 70-210 mm. First picture is taken with lens fully open, f/1.7, and still it is able to achieve very good sharpness where the focus is. (T-bhp server compresses the images so if you want to see a sharper version of the picture, please check this: DSC01016 on Flickr

[gd1418]

Mine is the AF-D. And not to let a speck of dust or single scratch to happen, I need to keep the lens inside my safe. In that case I would rather keep that moolah in the safe. No?

Originally Posted by rajb3125

Spot on.

There was an version of the same lens available in AF-S but it had the exactly the same optics, where it worked better was AF/3D tracking. Hang on to it for few yrs and you probably will make decent profit out of it (remember 70-180mm Micro), that's assuming you don't let a speck of dust touch it and not a single scratch

Also 70-200mm VrII is a Step back from 70-200mm VrI

[raju2512]

Originally Posted by amitk26

Again I am not pitting a junk modern lens against stellar old lens but lets say a modern Kit lens with a kit lens of 70s.
FYI Helios 44-M , SMC Takumar 1.4 , Nikon AI 50mm were kit lenses back then. If you remove the AF motor part and just compare image quality with primes of today they are comparable.

I 100% agree with that. With out on board processors and post processing tools, the quality of optics was a prime consideration for any film camera. Again DSLRs (or for that matter any camera) were for only serious photographers and lenses of 70s and 80s were better built and optically superior to most of the kit lens of today.

I went with Sony A500 because I could buy a better camera with in my budget and buy or upgrade to better lenses as and when I can.

[kkr2k2]

Originally Posted by amitk26

DSLR sensors are not getting any smaller the APS-C is APS-C and it is bigger then half frame format of 70s which was quite popular.....

Sure???

Full frame: 36 x 24 has a diagonal : 43.266, crop factor is taken as 1.

Half frame: 18 x 24 has a diagonal : 30mm, hence crop factor (43.266/30) = 1.442

APS-C:
canon: 22 x 15 has a diagonal: 26.627mm, hence crop factor (43.266/26.627) = 1.624
Nikon: 23.7 x 15.5 has a diagonal: 28.151mm, hence crop factor (43.266/28.151) = 1.536


Or were you indicating APS-H????
Canon APS-H: 27.9 x 18.6 has a diagonal : 33.531mm, hence a crop factor (43.266/33.531) = 1.290

So approximate crop factors of the above formates can be taken as:
Full frame = 1
Half frame = 1.4
APS-C canon = 1.6
APS-C nikon = 1.5
APS-H canon = 1.3

Full frame > APS-H > Half frame > APS-C interms of format size.

Note: Lieca M8 is closer to APS-H hence a crop factor of 1.3!!
Trivial info: Unfortunately, M8 I guess has the highest depreciated value in the entire history of Leica!!!

[CrankShaft05]

Hello Everybody, Iam happy to announce that Iam the proud owner of a Canon EOS 500D. I just got the camera from Croma at Rs 34,195 and looking for an appropriate lens that fits my requirement. My main focus would be on wildlife photography. I might probably go for a Canon 55-250. One of my colleague suggested Sigma or Tamaron 70-300 macro. My budget currently is limited(12k). I would appreciate if somebodybody can suggest me a good lens at an economical price

[TheBeastFieast]

Where can I get the ET for nikon in Delhi NCR. Is there any make / model in particular to look for and what is the average cost. Can someone please help me with it.

[ampere]

Question on Resizing Options:

What Re-Sizers do you use? I use the native Windows re-sizer. Any thing else recommended or native one is good enough?

Also what resizing options to use? As per me, one is to maintain aspect ratio of the source image. Any other points to make a note?

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by ampere

Question on Resizing Options:

What Re-Sizers do you use? I use the native Windows re-sizer. Any thing else recommended or native one is good enough?

Also what resizing options to use? As per me, one is to maintain aspect ratio of the source image. Any other points to make a note?

I'd recommend not to use Windows image viewer or Office picture editor to resize pictures. The best way that I've come across is to use the 'Save for Web' option in PS (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S in windows) where you can specify most of the option like the resolution, whether to include Exif or not, resizing algorithm, quality etc. (set quality at values more than 90%)

[mykal shoemaker]

Originally Posted by ampere

Question on Resizing Options:

What Re-Sizers do you use? I use the native Windows re-sizer. Any thing else recommended or native one is good enough?

Also what resizing options to use? As per me, one is to maintain aspect ratio of the source image. Any other points to make a note?

I use Nikon viewNX2 software which gives lots of options for resizing.
It gives many options like removing EXIF data,colour profile and different size,format options.
It gives the option for selecting multiple files and doing a batch mode too.

[rajb3125]

I am amazed as to no one has mentioned Lightroom3.

[Samurai]

Here most people straight away go for Photoshop, so Lightroom gets left behind.

[shajufx]

I use Photoshop CS4 for everything (thanks to HW for giving me the portable version). I am not yet successful in getting a copy of Lightroom though many had promised. It seems to have a higher opinion for a day-to-day editing purpose.

[ampere]

Folks dont use GIMP?

Sorry for my ignorance. I know PS/LR are professional S/Ws. But then where do all these folks stand against each other? PS/LR/Aperture/Final Cut/GIMP?

I still use Picasa to manage my photos. Tried LR beta 3. It seemed too much a time when I was not serious about all this.

More basic: Can we at all put them in the same pedestal?

I am still shooting JPEG and not gone to RAW, as I have no idea of Post Processing.

[amitk26]

@Ampere GIMP is good some people say it is not as user friendly but then that comes only if you have some baggage of using another software thus familiarity comes in to play.

Simple thing is that people don't respect something if it is free.

Biggest Issue I have is that GIMP does not process Canon RAW natively and you need to use UFRaw plug-in.

UFRaw gives a yellow tint to some of the images , particularly those shot with MF lens.
Where as the same RAW from Canon provided software appears with correct hue .

However on Linux this problem is not there as FSpot reads the Canon RAW correctly.

So my workflow is I use Canon Image editor software first to adjust the RAW image and if I further need to do something like using layers to adjust use another software either PS or GIMP.

Originally Posted by shajufx

I use Photoshop CS4 for everything (thanks to HW for giving me the portable version). I am not yet successful in getting a copy of Lightroom though many had promised. It seems to have a higher opinion for a day-to-day editing purpose.

What is portable version ?
Light-room you can download at 99$ if you already have Photo-shop as upgrade i think.

[RaguHolla]

Originally Posted by ampere

Question on Resizing Options:

What Re-Sizers do you use? I use the native Windows re-sizer. Any thing else recommended or native one is good enough?

Also what resizing options to use? As per me, one is to maintain aspect ratio of the source image. Any other points to make a note?

I use AcdSee! Best one I find. Advantage, you can do mass resizing + renaming along with given width, % of Width height...

Does a pretty neat resizing, you won't find quality reduced. It reduces photo size to 10% of original size. Pretty good for web I say!

But it is not freeware. You get Acd32 in net, which does pretty much the same. I never found other tool equivalent good (have photoshop 7, element 5).