Slides went back into the trays, negatives into plastic sleeves in binders. I won't toss them, just in case. They already came in handy when I had a hard drive crash a few months ago. I didn't realize until much later that some folders were lost, and I had already wiped out the old backups. I was able to identify the missing pictures in Lightroom, and re-scan them.

All photos taken with the Sony A6000, 55-210 kit lens. Manual mode, 1/1600 F8, auto-ISO. Yes, these were cropped, but 24MP does come in handy for that.

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It's a box about 4-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 10, with slots on the side, where you slide the tray in. The trays hold a strip of up to 6 35mm negatives or 4 slides. You need to shift the tray over manually after each scan.

I found a Plustek 7600Ai film/slide scanner on eBay for $125. It's been a painstaking, slow process, but the scanner did an outstanding job. It took months, but I am finally done and I am very happy with the results.

He said he would take it back, but I am out cost of shipping.

Well, it did come from Florida. Humidity capitol of the world.

Paperweight it is then.

Go ahead, beat a guy while he's down...

I found a great deal on a used Olympus B-300 teleconverter. It arrived today, and although externally it looks great, it's extremely cloudy. I carefully cleaned the front and rear, but this did not make any difference. It seems that the cloudiness is on the inside. It looks a lot like the inside of my car's windshield :-(

I can't see any way to dismantle it, and I am not even sure if that's a great idea.

Do I now have a new paperweight, or is there something I can do to clean it up? I doubt that it would be worth spending the money to have it professionally done, but if I am wrong, please enlighten me.

Tracking moving objects hasn't really been my issue. It doesn't work every time, but my success rate has been good enough, considering my lack of experience and the speed of the birds.

What has me frustrated is scenes like the one below. To get that shot, I had to keep pressing the button halfway, changing my aim, until the blinky boxes finally grabbed a spot somewhere around his head.

I was shooting hand-held, in manual mode, fous-mode set to Wide, using either 1/1600 or 1/2000 at f6.3, with auto-ISO turned on. This specific picture was at 1/2000, f6.3, 800 ISO. I haven't doctored anything in Lightroom.

As I said, selecting Center focus did not seem to give better results.

Am I just too far away? The same thing happens even when the subject is closer.

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Hmmm. No ideas?

While you are thinking about it, here are some of the shots I took over the last few days that I thought were pretty nice. Tell me what you think.

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Hi, first time posting in this section.

I purchased a Sony A6000 a few weeks ago, so I took it out for a spin this weekend. We have a nice wildlife reserve close-by where they have a lake with lots of birds.

I'm really just trying to get comfortable with the camera, and I am practicing my focusing and tracking. One thing I noticed is that whenever I try to focus on birds (mostly ducks) sitting in the water, the camera seems to want to focus on the water in front of my subject. I change my aim, and keep trying, but it's difficult to get it to focus on my subject.

I am using the 55-210 kit lens, and I have the focus set to Wide. I tried switching to Center, but didn't really have any better luck.

I have had varying success with birds in the air though - some shots come out great, others not so much. I am loving the 11 fps that the A6000 can shoot, though it's really easy to get 11 out of focus shots in a row :-0

Are there any tricks to focusing reliably on my targets?

Thanks,

Brian

This reminds me of something that happened quite a few years ago. My mom complained that all of her pictures were coming out with a red blob in the corner of every shot.

One day we had the family together and she went to take a picture of us. As she held up the camera to take a shot, I realized that I had solved the mystery. The way she was holding the camera, her red-painted fingernail was placed right in front of the lens.

Needless to say, we all had a good laugh.

I'm sure I would love the A6500 too, but you know, the A7 series is even nicer, and then there's the new A9, and so on...

I had to draw the line somewhere, and for me it was the 6000. If the OP has the budget, I would encourage him to look at the upscale models too. Again, it comes down to which features you think you are going to want, then zero in on the model that does what you want at a price you can afford.

I think the manufacturers arbitrarily withhold features at the low-end, just to force you to the higher-end models. I mean, would it have cost Nikon that much to include bracketing on the D3400? Heck, my old Canon S5IS had that feature, and I'm sure that lots of other P&S cameras do too. The overall image quality is pretty much identical across all cameras from the same mfg using the same sensor, but different cameras will suit different people's needs and shooting style. The only one who can decide which is the best camera is the person who will be using it.

I was in the same spot as you - my last camera was a Canon S5IS. Honestly, I was never that happy with that camera. It took decent pictures, but it really did not give me the control that I was hoping for. When I made the decision to look for another camera, my budget had me quickly limit the search to the entry-level end of the scale. I looked carefully at the Canons & Nikons. It seemed to me that the two most comparable cameras were the D3400 and the T7i, but the T7i is far more expensive. The non-i Canons are getting pretty old, and only have 18MP. Also, if you are looking at getting 2 kit zooms, the Nikon wide/normal kit lens has VR but the telephoto does not. I believe that the Canon kit comes with both lenses having VR, but I'm not totally sure about that.

I then looked at the Sony A6000. At first I had a hard time with the idea that the cost was more than the D3400, but eventually I decided on the Sony. For me, it was the speed of focusing & drive mode, along with the ability to use virtually any kind of lens with an adapter (I have some old manual Minolta lenses from my film days) that made the difference. There are a couple of features like Bracketing that Nikon left out on the D3400, but the Sony has. I also figure that mirrorless is the future. It opens up many possibilities, and really has few disadvantages compared to DSLRs.

B&H also has the A6000 on sale right now for under $700 with the two kit lenses (which both have VR).

Honestly speaking, I think you can't go wrong with any of these choices, especially when you compare to your Canon S3IS. Any of these cameras will do a far better job, and produce excellent results. You just have to look at the comparison sites, figure out which features you really want, and then figure out which camera gives you what you want at a price you can afford.

Keep in mind that you held on to your old camera for a very long time. Spending an extra few hundred $ might be hard to do, but you will be stuck with this decision for a long time - you might as well get something that you will enjoy.

As for me, I don't regret my choice at all. I love the compact size of this camera, particularly with the 16-50 lens. I also love the speed. One of my pet peeves is that I hate pulling out the camera and missing the shot while the camera does its thing (booting, focusing, etc). The Sony is always ready when I am, and I love that. I've had a lot of fun playing with my various old lenses. The only bad thing about the Sony is battery life. It's pretty abysmal, but I went on eBay & got a bunch of spares and a charger, so it really doesn't matter to me. Changing batteries is a small price to pay for the many things I love about this camera. True, Sony does not have the huge choice of lenses that Canon & Nikon have, but I don't have a huge amount to spend on lenses, and they still have some great choices (plus the ability to use other lenses with adapters).

Good luck with your decision - I hope this helps.

The extra definition in the color version is probably because I didn't do any noise reduction on that version. Since I am still playing with a new camera, I probably tend to pixel-peep more than I should, and it helped there, but at the expense of the detail of the bricks in the roadway.

I bit the bullet and went with Creative Cloud. I figured that $10/month is a pretty good deal, and LR seems to have become the standard. I'm not thrilled with being locked in to Adobe, but I haven't really seen anything else that comes close to the power of PS & LR, or which has the ecosystem around it. If there is anything I want to do but don't know how, there is a Youtube video showing me how to do it.