Camera gear discussions

It’s hard to unlearn pointing the small focus frame in the centre to the main target to focus and lock focus, then move so that the desired content can all be seen and release the shutter.

 

Focus and re-compose, yes.

I move the focus spot around the picture. And then enter the levels of face and eye focus.

I remember split-screen focusing, in the old days.

 

Hi all - I am travelling later this week to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Will be our first time there and we will spend time in the Parks, but not exclusively. My understanding is that you want as wide as possible on the one hand and as tight as possible on the other. When I went to Italy last summer all I took was my Fuji X100V because I wanted to travel light and that worked out pretty well. I had wished at times to have wider, but rarely tighter. But this trip is very different.

I am debating even taking the 100V, but will probably pack it as it is so small anyway and could come in handy for walking around Teton Village and Jackson as well as at dinner. Will take my XT-4 with me and the 18-55 lens (1.5x crop factor on this and other lenses mentioned). I think I will leave my 35 mm 1.4 at home. I feel like I need longer telephoto though. I think my best options are (i) renting the 50-140 ($135/wk), (ii) renting the 100-400 ($225/wk), or (iii) buying the 70-300 ($799 retail). I would be inclined to buy a lens rather than rent but honestly I don't have a lot of use most of the year for a telephoto like the ones mentioned. When my son did sports it would have made sense and I might have sprung for even the much more expensive 100-400, but he doesn't play much anymore.

Curious as to others' thoughts on these options. Also, will the 18 mm be wide enough. I can't see buying/renting two lenses and it seems that with the 18 mm having the longer telephoto is more important than an ultrawide (and I always have the ultrawide on my Iphone FWIW).

 

I just bagged a mint Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 VC USD with the tripod collar and tap-in console, boxed for 450 European Euros which I think was an absolute steal!
After using it for only a couple of hours so far I'd definitely recommend buying a 2nd hand one that's been looked after. Sometimes they're still in warranty (5 years). Mine has just over a year left.
I use it with a Nikon D5600 which has about 150k clicks on it so far and as it's APS-C I get an equivalent maximum focal length of around 600mm. I'm tempted to also get a 1.4 teleconverter to use with it but I'd like to try one out first.
I found that I'm using it also for close shots as it has a decent minimum focus distance of around 1m which is handy - less need to swap back to a prime or my 18-300.

I think the novely value might wear off a bit and it's a bit lardy to carry around for any length of time but overall I'm pretty pleased with it. A good investment!

Christopher Frost's video helped me put a line underneath deciding to start hunting for one:


18mm is a no-brainer when travelling around imo and your camera bag should always contain at least a 16mm or 18mm for those wide shot opportunities.



The following are some of the first shots I've made with it and were all shot at around 300-400mm.

Chopper coppers. About approx 200m above me. Not sure if they were looking for me when I took this. That camera under the nose was busy sweeping around my general position. Well at least we have some shots of each other!


Looks like I'm stood right in front of this little fella. I was about 30m away from him looking down from the roof terrace (as per the first photo showing camera and tripod)


Little long-shot / infinity exercise. Imgur/forum compresses the image a bit but I was impressed with how much detail there is across the whole image when stopped down to about f6.3

 

Are Fujifilm cameras still good to take photos of peoples and animals @purr1n? Thinking about in the future get a nice camera but I can't do the body/lens trap where I jerk off too much of the hardware and less on actually taking f'ing pictures.

 

@purrr1n old school photo lessons are not fun for the now crowd. Given the time to compose and adjust for light as all of us amateur photographers have been taught is not practical in many situations. No surprise that the iphone made quick work of the task.

 

Personally, I hate what my iPhone 12 Pro Max often does with (white) skin colour. It looks like magazines, i.e. completely unnatural and over processed. The auto tune of photography.

Yes, more than good enough for quick shots, but if I want good material, I still use my Nikon D610. And the difference becomes really massive in low light.

What I do like a lot, though, is the Argentum iPhone app for b/w shots. Many different filters for great effects. A lot of fun and often spectacular results.

 

I have the regular iPhone 13 and it is ok for camera shooting. I consider it good enough for basic stuff but I am not really in love with the camera quality itself if that make sense (it is in point/shoot quality). When I had my old Sony equipment I was doing a lot better shots. Who knows really....I might just stick with the iPhone but there were times that I wish I had something better.

 

Dang I wish I'd seen this earlier in the week, you could've borrowed my 100-400.

I'd take the X100 for in-town shots, and just the longer lens for wildlife. I'm planning on selling the 100-400 to get the newer 150-600 at some point. The 70-300 would be a great option.

The processing on the iPhone has always bugged me; it's way too oversharpened. The Pixels are definitely better for photography. But RAW mode in iPhone pro models mitigates that a lot. You just have to remember to switch that on when you want nice photos.

edit: I forgot to mention that I've found ON1 Photo to be the easiest software to get good results. Everything is intuitive, and it's got everything in a single package. I can usually get a photo done in a minute or two now. Not affiliated in any way.

 

I bought a new toy this week, in preparation for an upcoming trip.

I've wanted a 400mm f2.8 for quite a few years now and finally splurged



I wanted to take some demo shots with it yesterday after I got it in the mail, so I decided to shoot my car, turns out, shooting something the size of a car with a 400mm requires you to step back quite far, I was like 200ft away, the whole car barely fit in the frame.



shot with my A7R5, f5.6 at 1/200 hand held iso ~125 I think

 

Car or expensive lens case? (the hyphen is optional )

lol... and congratulations on the new purchase. Have fun! What camera is it that you have hanging off the end of the lens?

I hope to have one soon, too: the new Sony a6700.

Then I have to start saving up for a new lens case. Ahem, car.

 

A Sony A7R5, I upgraded from the R4 cause I wanted the cf-express slots

 

What are the popular all in one cameras (I guess point n shoot like the Sony RX series) that does pics mostly good for various uses that isn't $2k? Or stick to phones like everyone else?

 

Well, actually, you said it yourself already: The RX series from Sony. At least that was the way to go some five or six years ago or so.

After my brother got his daughter, he wanted to buy a decent camera that was smaller than an SLR, easy to use and made good photos. I did a big market survey for him then, and he ended up buying a Sony RX. If you want more zoom and/or detachable lenses, some mirrorless system camera might be the way to go, with Sony probably being the system where you’ll most easily find used deals in order not to pay so much. (My brother thought it was too expensive and too large with a zoom lens.)

Anyway, at that time, there was some older RX model available for around € 400,–, and that’s what he went for. He shoots great photos with it.

 

And the rest! That camera has just about everything.

But the AI and object identification has trickled down to the a6700; I'm happy with aps-c (I can't afford and don't want to carry those monster lenses); and its crazy cheaper. And I hope all this new focus tech does justify itself, because I'm pretty happy with the pics from my a6500.

The a6700 is not what a lot of us a7000 dreamers wanted. But it's all we're getting, it seems, so we'd better shut up, hand over the wallet, and be glad that it is a lot cheaper than our dream camera would have been

 

Today's lucky haul involves a beautiful, mint, boxed Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 super-telephoto lens.

There's a burgeoining surfeit of APS-C bodies and lenses available on the 2nd hand market right now as all the pro's and semi-pro's move to full frame gear, which is great for rank amateurs like me to swoop in and knab all the tasty unwanted castoffs!

The seller was asking €800, which is already an absolute steal considering this lens was €1200 new in 2021.
I offered an incredibly cheeky €600 to which the seller surprisingly agreed to. Usually when my cheeky bids like this are accepted quickly I smell a rat and suspect something might be up. But no, after trekking an hour up to Wezep at the North end of the beautiful Veluwe I met with the seller who graciously let me give it a full going over.
Satisfied everything was in order the transaction was made and I became the proud owner of this zoomy magnificent beast!

Not far from the sellers' house is a beautiful tranch of land popular with the locals due to the gentle slopes filled with 'heide' (heather) towards the end of summer.
He told me it had already started to bloom and it might be a good first opportunity to use the lens in anger. So off I set and as I arrived I was immediately struck with how beautiful the place is.
I go gravel riding a lot in the Veluwe but I'd never been this far north before. What a treat.
I spotted some of the hairy orange beasts that roam the plains there too!

So along with the Tamron 100-400mm and a brand new Tamron 16-300mm, this 150-600mm makes a nice trifecta of Tamrons. Not quite a lens for every occasion and a nice 24-70mm may be filling the 'landscape lens' gap soon... but enough focal length to keep the birds preening and pruning themselves for the camera. The winged variety that is

 

The Tamron 150-600mm G2 does an amiable job of shooting the moon.
It was hanging quite low in the sky tonight so nowhere near as sharp as it could be due to trying to focus through the atmosphere, but still some interesting crater and canal lines details to be seen.
Definitely need to get a more stable tripod however, as using all the stability tricks in the book; exposure delay mode, 5s delay, tripod weight etc was still fighting against the wibbly wobbles.

 

After going down to Daytona Beach to see the crap on the streets that's lol, I wish I had a good camera on me to take a pic that isn't a phone. I think in the future I might pick up a Fujifilm X100 series like the rest of the internet hippies for da fake film processing. Do not want to deal with zoom lens or changeable lens/body like a retard and just deal with one good enough lens and take pictures of the borderline shithole of FL. Also, I am not into using post processing software period on my Mac, I'll let the camera shoot phots as-is on jpeg and call it a day.

Saw a few freaks walking down A1A in Daytona as usual that I think is good pic worthy. Even saw one building that is over a million dollar value and a block away is a crack house.