165 years

[laughing_bear]

Every so often the remains of a whaling shipwreck emerges from the sand on my beach, it is said to have sunken 165 years ago, and all the seamen with it. I was told it was a 12 seater rowing boat. This is one of the side wooden panel remains sticking out.

[georgeinar]

That is a very cool picture. Amazing actually. I love the way the focus blurs softly the background.

[laughing_bear]

Thanks George!

I don't know, I am working since the better part of 3.5 years now on photography, and still, I find out something new every day, then again, that's why I love it.

[georgeinar]

What I like about using my digital camera is the immediacy of it all. I know that there's more professional cameras out there, I have a Canon IS 800 or something like that. It has it's limitations, but does do some beautiful pics without really any struggle. I find it focuses in nearly all light, thought in dim light it's a bit grainy, but that's a good tradeoff vs using a flash which I hate. The nice thing about photography is that while you may be shooting natural scenes or people, there is so much to how you compose the shot, the art is largely in what goes on in your head vs setting up 'staged' pictures. So much is in your own ability to tell a story or evoke an emotion simply by how you capture an image and what you might show in the background or foreground. I find it so intersting to try outdoor pics with some showing 2/3rds of it as sky, and then the same shot with the sky only in the upper 1/3 and how different the shot is each way. I have been reading websites on photography as I've never been trained formally at all, and I've read some of the basics such as the rule of thirds and framing your shot. How you should not just take a picture without trying the shot from different angles and also don't just shoot from your own eye level. Stuff like that. I do try things and sometimes it turns out great and sometimes it's boring.

[laughing_bear]

Well said!

As far as I am concerned, rules are there to be broken.

I shoot instinctively, meaning I walk for hours and may come home with only a single picture such as in this case here.

[georgeinar]

I thought photographers took a million shots and then keep just a couple good ones out of the lot, that's what I do. But maybe that's one of the rules to break too.

[laughing_bear]

I used to do the same, had around 80 Gigabytes in less than 3 month. This was 3 years ago.

I deleted them all.

Sometimes I spend the better part of a week in any given spot that attracts me before I start shooting. I suppose I am just odd in that respect.

As far as cameras are concerned George, I spend way too much time on foras reading about DSLR xyz sensor blah blah, the Net is full of selfcrowned experts who love to read themselves over and over again. A good picture taken with a crap camera is still a good picture in my book! A shite picture taken with a Sinar Hy6 and Schneider Lense with eMotion 33 MP digital back, well, it is still a crap picture.

Having said that, sure, if I had the chance to rehearse on a Steinway D instead of a Boesendorfer Piano, I take the Steinway any day.

At the end, it is all about the final print, and not about the way we came to it. I would love to shoot with Sinar though, and I certainly will one of these days. Until then, I work with what I have.

[chordial]

Amazing Bear, looks almost like a statue. Really nice processing too.

BTW - just bought myself a D300, at long last!

[laughing_bear]

That is a excellent camera from what I was told. Very good value for money.

I was contemplating the Dx3, and there is a lot to like about Nikon's first FF, but a little bee told me to wait a little longer, chances are that there will be a Dx3-blah FF with twice the MP, a 24 MP sensor, rather sooner than later.

But there are more reasons for me to consider a serious investment into Nikon, one is the new 14mm wide angle and the MDBF charts are outstanding, while an expensive "piece of glas" , I really think for my line of work this would be an excellent solution. The other resaons are the new T/S lenses.

Here is to hoping that they include a sensor cleaning in the Dx3-blah as well, I fail to understand why this feature was left out in the recent Dx3. Doh?

So since how long do you have you D300 and what do you not like about it?

[chordial]

Sounds good Bear,

I’ve had it for 4 days.
Things I don't like, that's a tough question!
A very minor thing - the top LCD doesn't show the focus point selected (the viewfinder and the display on the back does though). As I’m using Lightroom, the raw files are just as were taken, it does comes with NX capture, and I should give it a go really to get the benefit from some of the in camera settings.

It's much easier to rave on about all the things I do like. So far, it's everything I'd read about, and more in real life. There's an assignable function button that's set to bracketing as standard - so by pressing this and setting the number of frames (and ev amount if you wish), and setting another dial to continuous shooting (this whole operation takes a few seconds), it's HDR capture ready. 12MP stands up well to cropping, noise handling is very good at high ISO, it seems like all the important functions are on buttons/wheels. Other than initial setting up I've hardly used the menus. The metering is very good, so far (700 shots), it's only been caught out a few times (small areas over exposed) by very difficult lighting conditions. Battery life is good, it's fast and feels very well built.

I need better lenses now!! I borrowed a friends Sigma 70-200 F2.8, that was very nice.

Yes the rumoured D3x/D4 should be a medium format type ff dlsr, should be a very interesting camera.