My lighting is not flat as you can see I have leg shadow clearly falling on the petal. I had the ring light off and the top flash on after advice from a previous post. Clearly that is not the answer.

I need to sturdy up on the Nikon Flash systems and how they work with manual setting and manual lenses.

I believe my D90 is reading the flash although the flash is not a ittl. The SunPak flash has no power settings to dial up or down. I adjust the exposure by chimping the Histogram.

So post processing with color saturation to get separation and depth are not tools generally deployed?

I was out playing with my crab spiders on the last of the rose blooms. I got what I think is the clearest shot of one of the critters hand held with my ring light and 105 Kiron. The shot just looks flat to me. I don't know what is wrong. Not the lens I think and the exposure looks OK to me. Do you guys do any or much PP on your macro shots?

The mirror box is a rear projection screen. They sell them to place directly in front of the projector lens, movie or slide and inside is a 45 degree mirror which put the image on a screen. I don't know what it is called. Fresnel screen I think. it is a piece of milky glass. I grabbed an image from one sold on eBay to show.

Thanks for the info. I found what you referred to at
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?oid=63076139&ref=r0302DQEQZ

They are out of stock at the company store. What additional software did you apply to this equipment?

I bought a slide scanner some time back and was not happy with the results. I recently opened a box of negatives and felt guilty that I need to do something with these and store them on a drive. I am not guilty enough to spend a Grand on a pro quality model. What do you have that you like and also what you don't like.

Second question. Is it worth projecting slides into amirrored view box and re-photograph them with my nikon and color balance the projection lamp?

It would probably be faster. Opinions?

Thanks, JB

I figured it was a canon as I saw you had another lens listed. It you use a program like Picasa you can look at the photo data of a shot taken with that lens. I have a Quanatary 28-200MM lens that is great. I have a Promaster 70-300mm Macro that is sharper than my Nikkor of the same range. Picasa shows the lens ID of the Promaster as made by Sigma. The Quantaray has no manufacture ID. But, it would be a handy manual focus lens for someone. PS. Never give away a lens that needs manual focus. You may be called on to photograph a sand storm some day and wish you kept it. JB

I attended a street fair and car show this past weekend. I have a inexpensive but very sharp and versatile 28-200mm Quantaray zoom for my Nikon. I use it a lot and leave my primes and shorter and longer Nikon zooms in the bag when walking around. Many times the cars are parked to close together to even get the entire car with a wide angle. That was the case this weekend. Also people are everywhere. I find the wide angle lets me get down in close to shoot portions of a car that tell the story of the car and it's lines. The telephoto lets me shoot tight shots of hood ornaments and details without people. Also good for dash board shots of gauges and radios, clocks etc. through open windows. I have a lot of interesting shots with no people in them but not an entire car int he bunch. PS pack a polarizer. Best of luck, JBD90

Packard

Oh, I think this is a very valuable lens. It is one of those that fit every type camera. Hard to find those universal mounts. JB

Sorry about the location. It does not generally matter but I guess in this case it is very relevant to my question. I reside in Virginia but my grand kids are in North Carolina. Those laws would be of interest if different. JBd90

This spider has taken over my wife's truck. He will not give it up. He has set up house or rebuilt his house over the last 3 days between her radio antenna and the truck. Each day as she runs her errands the climbs to the top of the antenna and holds on tight. Each day when she returns home and his web is blown away. He rebuilds. I tried to shoot the web but could not get it to come out well enough to see without over exposing him. I don't know what he is other than persistent and he prefers Ford products.

I am trying to understand the legal issues regarding posting candid pictures of people to a site like this.

I would think this is considered publishing and a proper model release would be required to have the right to post or publish anyone's image to this site or any internet site.

I know people post pictures on Facebook of friends and strangers. Have the rules or laws changed?

[quote=Richard94611] It is true that Republicans kept him from achieving many other things he wanted to achieve.


Wow, talk about revised history. Republicans could not prevent him from doing anything he wanted. They did not have the votes. If anybody stopped him at all it was a bunch of Democrats who made up the resistance that mattered. Open your eyes and stop listening to the cliches.

Hold on! A non Ai lens can damage a modern Nikon digital camera. Ai and AIs lenses have a flush mount. If you look at your camera with the lens off in the 8:00 position you will see a small lever on the outside edge of the lens mount. A Pre Ai lens will over hang the lens mount and press down and possibly crush that lever. There are places you can send you lens and they grind off that over hanging lip and make other adjustments and then the lens is Aied. You can easily inspect the Vivitar lens and see how much outer rim the lens has. If on inspection there is little or none and you can mount it and see that the small lever is not crushed you are good to go. I have an old Vivitar zoom and it has overhang and can not be mounted without damaging my D90. Check out John White http://www.aiconversions.com/ lots of good info.
Best of luck JBD90

I will add my .02 on camera choice. I have returned to photography after retiring my SLR 30 years ago. I bought a Nikon D90. One great thing about NIkon is that you can use 90% of all old film lenses on the camera and shoot Manual. I picked up manual 50mm 1.4 a 28mm 2.8 and 105mm macro 2.8 for a song. No auto focus or VR or any electronics. I have modern DX lenses and an assortment of Auto Focus Film era lenses as well. Since I did not forget how to focus and I can use the Histogram for exposure if I need shutter speed for low light I have fast glass at hand. They are all awesome as well. Not all Nikons can activate autofocus film lenses. Check into that if you go Nikon, but all the lenses will mount. JBD90

I will share a project I have yet to build but have tested the concept. Call it a reverse monopod. On eBay you can find a 1/4 20 tripod nut with a metal ring on the bottom. to this you attach a non stretch cord or thin chain like ceiling fan pull chain. to the bottom you attach something flat that you can wrap the chain /cord around. the idea is you stand on the plate and the chain is just long enough to bring the camera to your eye. You pull up and the resistance against your foot gives you stability. Your body will dampen vibration. This will be as close to a monopod as you can get with a tool you can slide into your back pocket. In combination with the exposure advice given you may improve your situation. JBD90