Be Excellent To Each Other

You can probably get a Nikon D40X for not much more money and I'd rather have a Nikon dSLR than an Olympus. Canon are also good, natch, but I'm a Nikon fanboi.

I've been mucking about with black-and-white photography at the moment. Shooting in RAW mode with some very basic manipulation (using the Camera RAW plugin) to colour levels etc.

Cheers GazChap. A quick googling reveals I'd have to find another £130 though. Mind you I'd rather wait and get something zomfg than merely omg.

A D40X probably isn't "zomfg" but there are far more lenses available for Nikon mounts than there are for Olympus - or so I assume anyway, I've certainly never seen as much choice lens-wise in shops and online.

If you want "zomfg" territory in your dSLR you're probably looking at one of the higher-end cameras.

Agreed. For features and choice of lenses, it's definitely a Nikon/Canon playing field right now.

Well yes, one mans zomfg is another mans omg.

What I mean is I don't mind paying more for something that will be better in the long run. Plus after reading a review of the Olympus I'm slightly put off.

Grim... can you get hold of a Canon and a Nikon DSLR for me to do a comparison review for the site?

Oh, and a bag of lenses, ta.

I went out at night:



Mrs Parm stood next to a bonfire:



And there were some fireworks:



And some trees:



(clickr for flickr, and that)

Good shots, particularly the fireworks. I did some of those a few years back, and it was a right pain in the arse.

This was my best fireworks shot. Nowt fancy. No tripod, long exposure. I like it.

That's ace. Is it upside-down though? It looks like it should be.

Nope. It was directly above me

Awesome shots, Parm. Where were they taken?

Remember some of the Canon stuff currently has £50 cashback on it. Worth checking out.

In and around Cambridge. Apart from the tree, which was in Bakewell, Derbyshire.

The firework shots were taken using a monopod and manual exposure settings - I shot well over a hundred pictures that night, it's far more luck than judgement.

People talking earlier about 50mm lenses - the picture of Mrs Parm was taken with the Canon 50mm f/1.8, which is easily the best £80 I've ever spent. It's a stonkingly good piece of glass for the money - okay, the housing is a bit cheap and plasticky, and it's a bit slow to focus, but the optical quality is astonishing for the price, and I've taken some of my favourite photos using it.

(my other favourite lens is the Sigma 10-20mm, which is quite a lot less cheap-and-cheerful, and not quite as sharp around the edges as it good be, but I'm a total sucker for wide-angle stuff and for the money there's very little to touch it - it's the one that stays on my camera most of the time, in fact)

I have that lens. It is indeed brilliant.

I've (funnily enough) got some stunning prime lenses, but their all old manual focus (in fact, some of them are non AI as well they're that old). I have a Nikkor 50mm F1.4, Nikkor 85mm F1.8 (beautiful beautiful lens) and a Summicron (Leitz) 50mm F1.2 on my Leica M3. The lenses I use most are expensive zooms - they're very good, but they cost £1500 a piece when I bought them. I have a 17-35mm F2.8 which is simply a fucking stunning lens - there's almost no barrel distortion at 17mm which is amazing glass. I also have a 28-70mm F2.8 and an 80-200mm F2.8 which pretty much covers all eventualities. Primes are the way to go for better quality at affordable prices as the mad zooms that come with most consumer dSLRs aren't great, it must be said - but as I illustrated above there are decent zooms as good as primes they're just out of the price range of most enthusiasts. If you want to blow a fortune on fast primes though, be aware that Carl Zeiss make Nikon and Canon fit lenses. They're excellent but expensive.

@Zardoz - look at some second hand Nikon digicams. The D70 is a very very good camera.

@NervousPete - I'll put you in touch with my bro', he's quite a keen photographer and lives in Cardiff. He regularly goes to derelict mining sites around the Vale and breaks in to take pictures among other trips he does, so he would be a good place to start. He has a very very nice Nikon D700 which is a fantastic camera.

I've got a D70. It's great, but I really don't know how to use it proper.

Cheers Snappa.

Hey Zardoz.

I love the D40x. It's a great entry level DSLR. Not that I'd know, it being my only DSLR. I've had mine for a year and a half now. It comes with a very decent kit lens of 18-55mm and it's very capable. It's also pretty light and a touch smaller than most DSLR's.

My only gripes about it are that it can't auto-exposure bracket, so if you want to do HDR it's trickier than most DSLR's. Also, you don't get the digital read out at the top, you have to do everything via a menu to see the info - though there is a dial controlling shutterspeed and also aperture, if you hold a button down while twidling it. Thing is, it being my first DSLR I never had the experince of using the top placed LED's, so I don't mourn what I never had, I find the menu pretty easy to use and intuitive.

The D40x is capable of taking mighty fine photographs. You've probably done so already but why not search under Flickr with the tag D40x, and see what comes up under 'Interesting', you can then further filter with landscapes, macro, gigs, what not. It'd be cool if you got one, then I'd have a D40 buddy!

Parm!

Love those photos, but I think I like the one of Mrs Parm infront of the fire most, it's really atmospheric, like an 'End of England' Derek Jarman film still.

Cock!

The new camera has arrived but there is something blobby apparent on the photos when you point the camera at anything solid and light. Lens is clean and the dimensions of it change with the zoom. So I assume it's something on the sensor or inside the lens.

Ebuyer have agreed to swap it but it means no camera to play with for a few days [sobs].

Bah

Similarly, the long lens for my canon has some kind of fungus growing in it, which can be clearly seen through the viewfinder. It's been sent away to be cleaned once at daft cost, so it looks like new lens time. I might have a bash at taking it to bits to clean it myself, but the chances of it working (or even fitting back together) afterwards seem low.

Hopefully I'll spot something in the sales. It's too pricey to ask Santa for but now it's in my head I think I'll bag one at some point on 2010.

I mean, I deserve it, right?

Sorry to hear that Chinny, nothing worse than a broken new gadget.

Well there is, but you know what I mean.

Parm-those pictures are excellent, the one of Mrs Parm in front of the bonfire is my favourite one.

I have wanted a DSLR for ages not but can't really afford it, I think I will set that as a target for 2010 as well. In 2010 on New Years day, I will have been a non-smoker for 1 year

Well done so far! I think it'll be 4 years for me.

It's weird when you suddenly realise you think of yourself as a non-smoker rather than an ex-smoker eh? Well done to you too!

I think of myself as a fatter, older me now.

I reckon its contamination on the sensor itself. Ebuyer are collecting it in abit.

Do you not have a Giotto rocket to try cleaning the sensor yourself?

Keep your peepers peeled on your nearby Jessops counter, for the Manager's Specials. They do reconditioned/furbished second hand stuff, which is good as new. That's what my Nikon is, and it cost £100 less than it usually would have.

Hee hee! I got a splendid lunchbreak's photography in the old covered market in Cardiff. Took photos of the general big space with clock tower in the middle, a couple of hopefully atmospheric candid shots of a Chinese seamsters shop called 'Sew Elegant' ("Recording the seamy side of Cardiff, eh, NervyP? Ha ha," - ed.) some of some caged budgies that I infuriatingly couldn't quite the right angle of, a big long row of records ending in a bloke reading a paper, an Elvis, and something quite special.

I actually plucked up the courage to ask this guy if I could take some photos inside his old fashioned currently-idle barber shop, to my surprise he not only let me but left me alone inside to snap away. Took five minutes, trying not to giggle with glee. Didn't get any cool close up shots or anything due to not being able to think in such an exciting high-opportunity environment but I did get some nice wide angle stuff. Looking forward to seeing which worked and which didn't tonight!

Lewie P has more chance of getting hold of them, TBH.

And then he'll randomly give them to SuperDuperGill or something.

Just spent about three hours editing photos to order prints of via PhotoBox, an epic task. Having done so I figured I'd upload some choice ones onto my Flickr site, effectively doubling the number there. Here's a culling from them, hope you like...

[Photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99176172@N00/]



Squaw Valley Cable Car



Albert Memorial Detail



"Charlie Brown" Apollo Capsule 10, London Science Museum



Kite Caught in Tree, Hyde Park



Gios, on Mill Lane opposite workplace, Cardiff



Sinister Trees, Ambleside Lake District



"Don't Kick Me"



Disrespectful Bird, Huddersfield Library



Earth's Core, London Science Museum

Phew, that took a while.

Been flicking through the Redmond, Oregon tagged ones since that's where I'm headed next year. There's a photographer called Ashley, who's uploaded about five hundred photos in a row, half of them very similar variations on one theme - photographing hands making heart shapes over a limited variety of scenery. Clod. Through sheer volume he's got a couple of pretty decent ones though, but I feel nothing but crossness having had to click through the twenty pages of results to get past his work. Tsk.

Well, that's all that done. Bed for me now.

Gangle-limbed Andrew Marr and friends talk with a Beeb photographer who had his collar felt by a copper for taking sunset photos of St Paul's.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8384972.stm?ls

Right, now I'm off up to Castle Coch to photograph the critical weak points in the buttresses for C4 placement. The Queen might be visiting it at some point in the future.

I forgot to talk about the cat.

I love the cat.

Corking stuff, GazChap, really love the tones! Might be a desktop background for me...

Your pics are great, Nervy P - I especially like the one of the escalator n the Science museum, but then I d love the Science museum anyway.

You know, you can upload your pics to Flickr and then print via Photobox from there, so you don't have to upload them twice if you wanted to store them on Flickr and also order prints, in the future.

My maw's got a thing about trees, one side of her kitchen wall is covered in photies of "interesting" trees.

I like them better without leaves though.

Coniferousist!

Have another one:



Cheers. If you want the high-res version let me know.

Have you enhanced the eyes in that one?

No access. It's a sealed fixed unit.

All I generally carry with me is a big lens cloth so I can wipe the lens when required. Like when I was hanging out of a car window last week.

No, just messed around with colour levels in the camera RAW plugin again. No actual "photoshopping" as such.

I wouldn't mind biggo version of those two, thanks Gazchap. Real 'eye popping' stuff, AH HA HA! Seriously though, kids, ain't he a wonder?

Found this on Flickr, by some lass called Elena Kalis - bloody hell!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sugarock/show/

I follow her on DeviantArt. Great stuff, but I'm getting a bit bored of seeing the same thing over and over.

Here's one I took last week. Coincidently my Mum told me yesterday that my Great Grandfathers name is on this Memorial, in the centre of the Fleetwood Memorial Park. He died when the ship he was serving on was hit by a torpedo and he was below deck.

I noticed theres a competition in the latest wired magazine for a fancy wifi printer if anyones interested. Think the topic for photos was 'future' but I'll have another check in the morning.

Was just leaving for work this morning when I looked out the window and saw this:




Can't take any credit as nature was doing the work and I've not used the camera properly yet or read the manual so it was just on full auto.

A large part of photography is opportunism. Great pics.

Awesome, someone liked one of my London pics enough to ask me if they could use it in their guide & here it is

Couple of arty shots I took at The Egg's wedding on Friday, there are more on flickr:

Very nice, particularly the first one.