[shajufx]

Originally Posted by pjay_in

....I don't know if the lens and flash are going to be compatible with Nikon at all. Any idea? Or for that matter with Canon ?(my brother is into Canon).......

Saw your previous post and the replies to it, but this one made me reply too When your brother is a Canon guy, why do you want to go the Nikon way ? If your brother does not allow anyone to touch his gadgets, I withdraw my question

[oxyzen]

Originally Posted by amitk26

Tell me if your setup is exclusively for macros or not ?

No my setup will not be exclusive for Macros. Even my plan to get a lens for Macros is for the next year.
My setup will me mainly for landscapes and nightshots. Macros comes next. I am not willing to compromise specially on nightshots. It is my primary requirement.
1) So the Nikon D3100 has an advantage over the Canon 500D due to a slightly larger sensor.
2) Now coming to lens both have same aperture but physically the Canon seemed to have a larger lens dia. Am I right? And does that mean the canon lens is better?
3) Same focal lenth lens is there in both cameras. So Nikon with bigger sensor size will have a more wide angle view.

Originally Posted by amitk26

You definitely need AF for shooting normal pictures of kids , pets , animals or a party, I also have a very good manual lens but I use that mostly on non-living subjects because in today's age subjects don't have patience.
In most of the gatherings every guest will pull out his smartphone or point and shoot and few with DSLRs hanging in neck with all purpose lenses and may be 0.005% people will understand why you are taking so much time

For these scenarios should not be the Kit lens with AF be just fine.

Originally Posted by amitk26

In case yours is going to be exclusive macro setup and you are willing to spend money in years to come then also Canon is best setup because of a simple reason that there is Canon MP-E5 lens which is the only lens in market providing 5X magnification with out any extension tubes . This is a small handy package for serious macro photographer.
Else if you want to go beyond 1:1 which a macro lens provides natively you need to use macro lens + extension tubes, lens stacking and reverse mounting etc in various combinations to get extreme macros which is bulky and not necessarily hand held setup but very cost effective.
Canon EOS allows you to use adapters and use various old MF lenses for this kind of usage. (Read my earlier posts in this thread)
In either case Canon is best bet ( among nikon and Canon)

If you love Nikon go for it but buy D90 which has all the functions and not D3100 wait for few more months and up the budget rather then going for D3100.
About your question , I personally do not think grip is that big deal , If I have to spend more money I will invest rather in a battery grip LOL

I am just a Newbie in photography. So have kept my budget limited. These days DSLR are continuously shedding prices. SO maybe a few years down the line a semi-pro DSLR with be worth it. Now I think will stick to entry level.
So its all about Nikon D3100 vs Canon 500D. D90 looks like an expensive proposition as of now.
Checked out the NEX3. Yes it is compact. But again, the lens dia seemed less. (Does is actually matter). The built was excellent. But I somehow did not like the interface.

[vijaythacker]

guys, i am using nikon D3000 for about a year now and got 18-55mm lens along with.After using this for a year now, am getting much used to this new camera and its technology, so was planning to buy a new lens, what are the recommedations.Was thinking to go for 18-135, shall i go for this or some other one please do help.
my main crieteria is the range with better wide angle shoot, which is too limited in current lens.

[aburagohain]

Originally Posted by VW2010

I say Alpha is the way to go for Full Frame

Thanks for the push in the proper direction VW

The Tokina116 is available in full frame now it seems, may not be for all mounts yet though, this is one lens that bends my thinking all the time

[pjay_in]

Originally Posted by shajufx

Saw your previous post and the replies to it, but this one made me reply too When your brother is a Canon guy, why do you want to go the Nikon way ? If your brother does not allow anyone to touch his gadgets, I withdraw my question

Liked that question . Well, this way we can have the best of both worlds!

Now more seriously, I and my bro live almost half the country apart and have been meeting only once or twice a year (though we are in contact everyday). So sharing doesn't work. I guess it will be more fun if we swap the entire equipment on those rare holidays together

[livyodream]

Originally Posted by amitk26

True and that is what is world of extreme macros , If you stack a lens reversed over another to get 5X+ you still get same kind of working distance with vignetting with a much bulky setup. Try out 50mm reversed coupled to 250mm. for 5X.

Does it really happen ? i tried it on 55-250 and 50mm prime, never could it focus.

let me know the exact way to do it.

[clevermax]

Sony says that its future Alphas will all have translucent mirror instead of the slapping mirror. So, may be one day Sony will only have DSLTs in their Alpha range! Future fps leaders in the making!

I have concerns too, considering our dusty conditions of usage. In DSLRs, while exposing the image on the sensor, there's absolutely nothing other than thin air between the back glass element of the lens and the sensor but in DSLT, there's always going to be this translucent mirror in between as a placeholder for dust and dirt! Wonder how difficult will be that to maintain.



More information here

Originally Posted by vijaythacker

so was planning to buy a new lens, what are the recommedations.Was thinking to go for 18-135, shall i go for this or some other one please do help.
my main crieteria is the range with better wide angle shoot, which is too limited in current lens.

18-135 will not give you any more wide angle than 18-55 because both are 18.
What do you mean by range? you mean more zoom?

[Rudra Sen]

Originally Posted by clevermax

Future fps leaders in the making!

I presume you meant Frames Per Second here. For any maker the pellicle mirror is the way to speed up frame counts. Canon came up with Canon Pellix sometime in 1965. It had one major problem and that was viewfinder brightness. Basically a pellicle mirror allows 2/3rd of the light to reach film plane. But taking modern technology into consideration, there must be a serious jump at this front.

Canon had Canon F1 with 14 FPS some 20 years ago and yes it was with pellicle mirror. See http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography...nhighspeed.htm

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by Rudra Sen

I presume you meant Frames Per Second here. For any maker the pellicle mirror is the way to speed up frame counts. Canon came up with Canon Pellix sometime in 1965. It had one major problem and that was viewfinder brightness. Basically a pellicle mirror allows 2/3rd of the light to reach film plane. But taking modern technology into consideration, there must be a serious jump at this front.

Canon had Canon F1 with 14 FPS some 20 years ago and yes it was with pellicle mirror. See http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography...nhighspeed.htm

Thanks for the info Rudraji. Yes I meant Frames Per Second. I searched to see what exactly is the mirror in A33 and A55 (translucent) and it seems that it is more or less the same type of mirror which was used in the Pellix - which transmits 2/3rd of the light onto the sensor and 1/3rd of it to an electronic viewfinder - this is one place where new technology has its advantage, that the viewfinder can still display a brighter image even if the light reflected onto the eyepiece is low.

This is the link

[VW2010]

MY guess for the future generation would be grabbing a picture from a Movie. Meaning shooting the action as a video and just grabbing a 20MP picture from the frame of our choice.

That will just eliminate the need for shutter speed . I just like dreaming and most of the time the dreams have come true, like the Video in DSLR. That was my first dream few years back when i had the 5D Mark I

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by VW2010

MY guess for the future generation would be grabbing a picture from a Movie. Meaning shooting the action as a video and just grabbing a 20MP picture from the frame of our choice.

That will just eliminate the need for shutter speed . I just like dreaming and most of the time the dreams have come true, like the Video in DSLR. That was my first dream few years back when i had the 5D Mark I

Will be good to have such a feature. But in case if we are grabbing a frame from the video, we should have total control over the ISO, aperture and exposure of individual frame to get what we exactly wanted and that will still warrant a control of the shutter speed or whatever is controlling that while shooting a movie..

[W.A.G.7]

Sample pics from my new DSLR...

None of the pics have been cropped or touched up in photoshop. I am yet to learn photoshopping, but I prefer to keep my pics as they are. Some amount of cropping is however necessary in all the pics below

I am enjoying every bit of the new DSLR. It also came with a tutorial book on DSLR photography, 2 DVD's containing video tutorials of 1hr each, for using the D5000 and Nikon DSLR's in general.

[gd1418]

What lens are you using? I liked pic #:3 & 4. The eagle appears to be a bit soft.

In what mode are you clicking the pictures? Is it RAW or JPEG? A tight cropping of the pigeon in the last picture would have been a poster material.

Originally Posted by W.A.G.7

Sample pics from my new DSLR...

None of the pics have been cropped or touched up in photoshop. I am yet to learn photoshopping, but I prefer to keep my pics as they are. Some amount of cropping is however necessary in all the pics below

I am enjoying every bit of the new DSLR. It also came with a tutorial book on DSLR photography, 2 DVD's containing video tutorials of 1hr each, for using the D5000 and Nikon DSLR's in general.

Attachment 508595

Attachment 508596

[W.A.G.7]

Originally Posted by gd1418

What lens are you using? I liked pic #:3 & 4. The eagle appears to be a bit soft.

I am using the Nikkor AF-S 55-200mm lens. And I too noticed, the black kite (not eagle! ) was a bit soft. Maybe because, for uploading, i have opened and saved the picture using MS-Paint. But maybe also because I am still learning how to use the SLR, only time will tell.

Originally Posted by gd1418

In what mode are you clicking the pictures? Is it RAW or JPEG? A tight cropping of the pigeon in the last picture would have been a poster material.

Presently it is set to JPEG+FINE. Maybe changing the mode to RAW will produce different results. Let me try it out. I will put up the pics captured in RAW mode. And yes, regarding the cropping, can someone please take any pic and show an example? I know there must be a thread for post processing photos, but can someone show me a quick cropping example? I am new to photoshopping!

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by Gandhi

Just wondering if anyone uses the Raynox 150 or 250 for macro shots. The 250 gives 8x magnification.

NX in the context meant that the magnification on the sensor. Suppose if you have a subject of 4mm and you can fill the APS-C sensor width of 22mm with it then you have 22/4= 5.5X magnification. Easiest way to measure is to put a mm scale and focus and check how many MM fit in to the sensor width.

Rayonix diopter does not give 8X magnification, it is +8 diopter lens.
that means 1000/8 focal length = 125mm. So with a 50mm lens like Canon 50mm F1.8 with native magnifcation of 0.4X (approx) you get.
(0.4X + 50/125) :1 or 0.8 :1

With a dedicated 1:1 macro lens like Canon 100mm F2.8 MAcro this will be
(1 + 100/125) :1 that is 1.8:1

On the other hand if you stack a 50mm lens on 100mm F2.8 macro you get
(1+ 100/50):1 or 3:1

I hope it is clearer with this

Originally Posted by livyodream

Does it really happen ? i tried it on 55-250 and 50mm prime, never could it focus.

let me know the exact way to do it.

As the magnification increases the working distance reduces keeping focal length same. In case of stacked lenses the working distance is extremely less.
So keep the front of the apparatus with in 2-3 inch of subject and move back and front to acheive the focus. If you want to increase working distance reduce the focal length of lens attached to Camera.

Will post a couple of images tonight for you.

Originally Posted by VW2010

MY guess for the future generation would be grabbing a picture from a Movie. Meaning shooting the action as a video and just grabbing a 20MP picture from the frame of our choice.

Couple of big problems with grabbing frame from video, videos are encoded to save bandwidth , even if bandwidth is increased people prefer to pack more information ( bigger frame , better audio) rather then sending un-encoded video.
The way video encoding is done is that there is a Complete frame ( P frame) once in a while and the rest of information is differential change ( I frame) with reference to P frame , So you can only grab complete frame only at P frame instance.