They are "keepers" because I have no choice. Each is a jpeg made from a dng (I convert from nef to dng, a generic raw) with no post processing. I can improve the sky and the contrast but the issue is sharpness. Download the Sierra Blanca image and look critically at the crest of the ridge. It's so soft you could fall on it without injury. Similarly, the edges of the gravestone lettering are sharply carved but softly rendered.

I could have made both of those pictures with my Coolpix 8700 and saved a bundle. I am working on my volcano website, going through the hundreds of images made this past field season. They're OK for a website but I wouldn't print a one of them.

I'm not going back out with this lens. New lens or new camera if I'm ready to spend up to another kilobuck?

I am a victim of the Nikon 18-200 mm Coke bottle. The lens appealed to me because I could have a wide range of focal lengths and never have to open the camera in the desert. I did expect the quality to be less than optimum but I didn't expect THIS! Yes, I should have known better and a kilobuck is a lot to have wasted, not to mention the opportunities.

I need a better lens and am appealing to you Hedgehogger's collective wisdom to point me in the right direction. My specialties are volcanoes and gravestones.

Sierra Blanca and the Pinacate desert


Gravestone in Lexington, Ma.

How prescient. I have this same lens and am NOT happy with it. As you can see, I am a geologist working in a volcano field in Northwestern Mexico. I decided to get the 18-200 so that I would never have to change lenses in the dirt thinking the expected quality degradation of that long a range would justify never getting a camera full of sand. It cost a kilobuck and the results have been disappointing. Imagine hiking for a day over the lava and coming back with fuzzy pictures.

Interestingly, I have a friend who is a pro with the pro versions of the 18-55 and 55-200. I put his lenses on my camera focused on the 1952 Air Force target and found that my coke-bottle and his Nikkors resolved the same line sets. The target was on or near the optical axis of all lenses.

At 72, I don't know how many field seasons I have left in these old bones but I gotta get a better lens.

And that is the value of a sidecar file.

Here's the problem with god (and religion) - "MY GOD IS BETTER THAN YOURS, DIE INFIDEL SCUM!!!"

One group of mass murderers in Africa calls itself "Boku haram." Haram means "unclean, something bad" in Arabic and I think "boku" means "you."

There's a historical marker in Boston between a synagogue and a church commemorating the conversation between the rabbi and minister as they watched one of the buildings burn. One said to the other, "Worship in our building until you get yours rebuilt."

That happens but the "Die infidel scum!" is far more common.

Something else nobody thinks of. When you photograph anything from an airplane, you're moving and sequential pictures will be offset. Any two makes a stereo pair (if the helecopter is not hovering or moving slowly). I use StereoPhoto Maker to compose stereo images from my field area on my website (they're not easy to find, yet).

Nikonian72 had the best answer - raw is forever. Some apps will create "sidecar" files for metadata so that you can use image formats that do not store EXIF/IPTC with the bitmap.

I strip out EXIF on images that I use for headers and thumbnails on my website to save space.

I clicked on the link which took me to a 30 second ad (with sound) and after that was over, a 38 second video clip with no sound. What did the cop say? Who knows?

The issue with me is the ad. 45% of the time was advertising. Even "thirty-seven minutes" the CBS news program on Sunday nights, is only 39% ads. I think internet video clips are becoming too expensive to watch.

The Bible means exactly what I want it to mean! Nothing more, nothing less.

WOW! Two whole pages and no trolls. Will wonders never cease.

I am reading "Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahneman. THAT is a mind-opening book!

Gee, when i bought my fiberglass fireman's pike handle from the local fire equipment store, it only cost $80. But, it weighs 2 kg!

I think this might be it. I have written to them with questions about durability on lava and whether or not I can fall on it (things happen).

Thanks

I'm an old guy (71), no longer able to hop from rock to rock as I did in my miss-spent middle age. Because I hop/walk in lava flows, I made an "elderly geologist's walker" out of a fireman's pike handle because it is fiberglass and immensely strong. It's the yellow pole with the green tape scale markings under my hand in my photo.

In the best of worlds, somebody would make a tripod having the requisite strength to serve as a walking stick, able to resist the bending that has destroyed other tripods in my life. I realize that a walking-stick tripod would neither be collapsible nor have an elevating column.

Has anybody seen anything like this?

Wow! I never realized how boring my life is. The only time I have ever been confronted about my camera was in the days before cemetery managers realized that preventing gravestone photography was impossible.

I haven't carried a gun since my Navy days and feel no desire to even own one. I must be stupid because people around me are clearly terrified - of me, of the bogie-man, of what people who are better than them tell them to be terrified of.

Land of the free and home of the brave indeed.