aizan

are these still available? i'm interested in the 255.

are these still available? do you have measurements for the waist (dipped and straight), thigh (from crotch and from 3'' below), rise (front and back), and leg opening?

saying goodbye to my new cures. 14 months, one dry cleaning.

preferably grey herringbone. black or navy is ok, too (but not this season's argyle).

the leica m9 and x1 were announced on the 9th.

whenever a photographer has insecurities about being an artist, they do landscapes. true story.

measurements on striped boat neck?

I think that I read on DPreview that the 17mm is about equivalent to 45mm in the 35mm world, not 100% on that though.

35mm, actually. the conversion factor is 2x.

me too. olympus is going to release another micro 4/3 camera with a built-in evf at the end of the year, but those are not particularly good in low light. the only reason they'd choose an evf is to accommodate zoom lenses, which are kinda big and slow. i just don't get it.

http://detail.zol.com.cn/194/193758/pic.shtml

best waywt camera ever.

nope. you're not missing a thing. the limiting factor in practice is exposure and scene contrast. spend enough time in an amenable situation, you can eke out every last stop of dynamic range. things rarely turn out that good. raising the iso, for starters, will lower the dynamic range.

btw, if you do shoot raw, it doesn't mean you can ignore white balance when you're taking pics. the histogram is generated from the the white balance setting, so you might end up clipping a channel.

pentax is the only brand that has a decent selection of aps-c primes. i'd start with the 35mm f2.8 macro limited.

two quotes from the post you linked:

"...and you see why, in the huge majority of cases, any double-digit sensor will usually do at least as well, and usually better, than a 35mm film image at equivalent ISOs - in terms of resolution."

"But obviously, the range would be 54 Mpixels to 10 Mpixels (or less) - depending on what assumptions you make about the conditions, enlargement, etc."

i dunno about you, but i don't bother shooting spur orthopan in my leica. i just switch to my 6x9 fujis. and i like the look of tmax 3200, while i still don't like the look of digital noise, even after noise reduction.

in practice, dslrs only have a little more dynamic range than slide film, but there is much more exposure latitude. if you shoot raw, you can recover a lot of the highlights and shadows. it's ludicrous to say otherwise, because it just isn't true.

i agree with all of your points made regarding primes vs. zooms, which is why i hardly ever use zooms. waveform distortion creeps the hell out of me, but it doesn't matter for most photography, and it's trivial to correction barrel and pincushion. let's say you're an architectural photographer, and distortion really does matter. what lens are you going to buy? the one that's a hassle to use, or the one that gets the job done? the options are out there. dslrs aren't the preferred choice of architectural photographers anyway. it's shifted over to mfdb mounted on technical or view cameras, no pun intended.

the 85/1.4 ai-s was not produced in large numbers, it's extra fast, and a cult classic. of course it's not cheap. i already listed the exceptional characteristics that preserve value on the used market. most lenses are not like that. the 85/1.4 ai-s is still a bargain compared to the $1200 85/1.4D IF. i'd like to see how much the 35/2 af goes for after it's replaced (the 35/1.8 dx doesn't count, obviously). same goes for the 85/1.8 af-d that you want.

$100 is pretty inexpensive, imo. if i didn't have plans and strict guidelines for buying camera gear, i'd be dropping way too much money on this, that, and the other thing i can finally get without eating ramen for a month. it's a film shooter's paradise these days. i did a quick search, and there were 240 nikkors that sold for under $100 in the last month. i also found a near mint 85/1.8 non-ai converted to ai by john white for $250. that's a screaming good deal. i also found a near mint 28/3.5 non-ai with original caps for $60. that's the lens sam abell has used for his personal photography since the early 70s.

a more corrected, better coated (especially important for digital) lens with a new af mechanism presents benefits of its own. on the other hand, i'm fully aware of the reasons why an older lens can sometimes hold its value beyond normal expectations. the 35mm pre-asph summilux is a good example. this lens is revered in japan for its optical signature, especially at f1.4 where residual aberrations and low flare resistance create a delicate luminosity. they now sell for about $1500-3000, the same range as mint secondhand 35mm summicron and summilux asphs, which are far more perfected optics. mr. kobayashi of cosina voigtlander even payed homage to this great walter mandler design by creating the 35mm nokton classic, which mimicks its optical performance and size. it has much better flare resistance and costs a lot less, too.

i was joking about prices forever dropping at the current rate. it's not going to. if we look at the price of the canon eos 3 (the last film era counterpart to the canon 5dmkii), it was ¥185,000 in 1998. adjusting for inflation using the average monthly wage, and converting to dollars with today's exchange rate, that's $2,378.96USD. that number looks familiar.

and where did i say that nobody shoots film? i mostly shoot film. there are plenty of film dinosaurs and photo students. it sounds like you do too. you're just a little out of touch, is all.

if you wait long enough, they'll give you money to take cameras off their hands. ??? are you retracting your opinion that we'll be seeing ff cameras that don't cost as much as they do now? plenty of non-professionals are buying the d700, and most of them aren't rich, per se. want proof? look at flickr.

"sensors are not as good as the lenses they are collecting images from."

"there are few cases that I can think of, where a prime works significantly worse digitally than on film."

you've got it backwards. film obscures aberrations through grain and resolving power that decreases as film speed increases. there isn't a single general purpose film in 135 that can outresolve today's 10mp+ dslrs, though there are plenty iso 100 films that can break even. as the rule of thumb goes, if a lens tests well on digital, it will be fine on film. if you test a lens on film, you may be surprised what you see on digital.

btw, the best modern zoom lenses are as sharp as the best primes. that's not to say that i don't vastly prefer prime lenses, which i do, or that every zoom lens is high quality.

i haven't done the 10%, inflation adjusted math, but here are some cheap lenses off the top of my head:

almost every 50/1.4, 50/2, 50/3.5 macros, 58/1.4, 28/2.8, 100/2.8, 100/4 macros, 35/2, 35/2.8, 24/2.8, 85/1.8, 135/4, 200/4, 200/2.8 or thereabouts, for every slr lens mount.

exceptions include some high speed lenses, extreme focal lengths, pancakes, t/s or pc lenses, and assorted cult classics.

who's going to use a full range of prime lenses? who's going to spend the dough on ff cameras? entry-level users? anyone would buy anything if the price was right. if you like using primes, it's gonna present obstacles of some kind or another for a while. the perfect camera is not just around the corner.

50mm lenses are flooding the second hand market because they were sold with every slr for several decades. now that people aren't shooting film much, they're clearing out their closets.

i don't think buying a dslr means someone is a "serious amateur." as far as the market is concerned, it means "more than $1000, less than $3000."

the d700 already is the top prosumer ff model. if you're hoping that they will stick a ff sensor in a d90 level body, look at canon. three years after the 5d, we have the 5d mkii. same market position, $600 cheaper. maybe they'll put a ff sensor in a rebel chassis...three years from now? i think we're more likely to see an upgraded 5d mkiii that costs another $600 less. same story for nikon.

legacy primes will plummet in value, with a few exceptions, because sensors are much more demanding than film. they already reveal uncorrected aberrations that you never saw on film, and it'll only get worse.

look at prices of old slr lenses on ebay (i'm leaving out rangefinder lenses, whose values are inflated). only the most spectacular lenses hold or even gain value because of cult status, but even very good, solidly made lenses are available for a song. backwards compatibility is a value some manufacturers, such as nikon, pentax, and leica, maintain, but others, like canon, olympus, and hasselblad, are not afraid to abandon a lens mount for one reason or another. the fact that you can still mount old lenses on the newest body doesn't make much of a difference.

the only significant market for prime lenses is pros. as far as consumers are concerned, they have since the late 90s (before digital came along) contented themselves with a zoom lens or two. a few may go on to purchase a small, fast standard prime, and/or a macro, but usually not even that. so we see that currently nikon makes a dx normal, but not a dx micro, and canon makes an ef-s macro, but not an ef-s normal (though olympus makes both). this is yet another hint that ff probably won't reach the entry-level. primes are and have been primarily used by pros, artists, and serious amateurs.

the nikkor 10-24mm is equivalent to a 15-36mm on ff. that's pretty much as wide as it gets on any format, except for the voigtlander 12mm ultra wide-heliar.

what "limits sensor size" is manufacturing yield. it has nothing to do with sensitivity. i don't see any reason why aps-c will be abandoned, unless there is a major, major breakthrough in sensor manufacturing technology, which we have not seen this whole decade. doesn't mean it can't happen, though. we may see canon abandon aps-h, but that's about it, since canon never made any lenses for that format. and a larger format will always incur a "penalty" in size and weight.

you have two d40s and the 35/1.8 dx? why didn't you say so!

anyhow, aps-c will be around for a long time. ff dslrs will either never make it into the entry level, or at least take another decade to do so. by then, all legacy ff primes will have been replaced with ones that have af-s and better optics. sensors will also improve, and it's not only possible, but likely that tomorrow's aps-c sensors will better today's ff sensors, and so on. the bottom will fall out of the used legacy lens market, so you might as well cash in your chips.

there are superwide zooms for aps-c, too. nikon just announced a new one along with the d5000: 10-24mm f3.5-4.5.

http://nikon.com/about/news/2009/0414_nikkor_02.htm

that's good art?

sell your outdated screwdrive primes and buy the new af-s 35/1.8 dx...

ugliest dslr i've ever seen. olympus does a much better job with the whole movable screen thing.

canon and nikon's primes are all a bit lacking at their widest apertures, to say the least. both systems need to do some serious updating when it comes to prime lenses, especially now that sensors are in the 20+ mp range.

that said, if you're not deep into a lens system, i'd go with the nikon. canon is either not going to offer a compact 1-series body at all or it's going to drag its heels as much as possible. nikon gives you a solid, compact body, and has the best sensor around (in the d3x, and coming soon to the d700x).

yeah, i'm lazy.

the best p&s (canon g10, panasonic lx3, ricoh grd, etc.) can have image quality as good as any dslr. just shoot at the lowest iso setting and in raw format. there will still be less dynamic range, and it is more important to get perfect exposure, but it's not too noticeable in most circumstances.

buy a used lx2.

a digicam with a superzoom...what are you taking pictures of? birds, lions, girls on the beach?

limmy's show pilot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctcQvaxENt0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU72jVDgY3Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6SOYNSL9fU