OT Camera choices OT

Not dat, neither. 'Course, I've never seen the movie/play, either.

My longest lens is 2800 MM F10 fixed. I have a 2000 MM F10 next in line. Then 500 MM F5. Then into AI and advanced digitals for my Nikons

2 F's and an F3 and my Fuji S2 Pro.

The 2.8k is 11" in diameter, the 2K is 8" in diameter, the .5K is 6" in diameter.

I've got micro's and wides. Use both C and T mount barrels.

Find I shoot less and less.

Mart> >

That's my point. The basketball photo tells its story at a glance.

The Phantom of the Opera photo at best records who is present if they are facing the camera. If you were there you'd hear the music and see the dancing but those are lost in a still, so it's not a good candidate for artsy long lens selective focus closeups like this even though it's a carefully composed scene in an artistic performance.

I used my 105mm lens for publicity portraits of USO actors and the batallion officers (as targets for a dunking booth) but took a longer telephoto to capture architectural detail when out sightseeing. The

105 wasn't worth its weight and bulk in the bag. Normally I left the 50mm lens on, the focus at infinity and the speed and aperture set for existing lighting so I'd be ready for the unexpected.

I tried photographing a basketball game for a newsletter one of the officers wanted to publish, and only found out that I wasn't good or fast enough to get a decent action shot.

-jsw

Oh, OK. It was used as a type. Gotcha. I had missed that portion of the point you were making.

Sounds good. I seem to have better luck with my 55-200 on the body at all times, unless I'll be doing close work or shooting whole rooms inside. That takes a shorty with a wider angle. The little fisheye I got for my D40 smells a bit too fishy for me, but it will capture the full width of a shallow room, complete with fishy distortion.

Again, the newer cams/lenses do so well automatically, I haven't yet found a niche where I could be better at it than they are. Hmm, maybe it's time for a photo vacation in late spring. Long enough to heal this old bod from the last large job I do. ;)

I feel that more often it's the camera rather than the photographer. With a good, fast, zoomy cam/lens, people become better photogs. At least more often than not. (Some people have no eye, and couldn't compose a photograph if it was close enough to bite them.)

BTW that's technically a mid or medium shot rather than a closeup.

Such zooms were beyond my reach in the early 70's. Also when I wandered around NYC I carried my camera in a paper bag so it wouldn't attract attention, and that ruled out large lenses.

-jsw

You might have to do that at the extreme of the zoom range -- but active kids will also move towards you as well as away -- unpredictably. Being able to zoom from wide enough to get good images when they are close to long enough to get more image before cropping at the distant end is helpful -- even if you do have to crop some afterwards.

The better the fit to the image frame, the better the quality of the resulting image. Whenever you crop. you lose quality -- and if digital, you normally don't have the final resolution that a good film could have given you. (But -- you can get a much higher ISO (used to be ASA), so you can use higher shutter speeds and smaller apertures at the same time to maximize what you do capture.

Good Luck, DoN.

True. Nice page, BTW.

Precisely why I removed the screaming yellow and black NIKON strap and put on the subdued black/forest green stretchy padded job. Much safer, from a mugging standpoint.