I have a fantastic macro lens for less than £50.
I bought a set of bellows of e-bay£20-00 and a 80mm nikor enlarger lens from e-bay£28-00. after taking addaptor plates I found that they fitted perfectly so I superglued them together.
I can now focus manualy on my d90 at f4 and then set apperture down to as low as f45 with no dof problems.
hope this is of help.
300% better than my50mm lens fixed @f22, and macro tubes.

If recharge times are a priority then you must look at the power of your batterys. Over the counter disposables are out.
rechargables varie from 800mamp to 2900 mamp.
Plus look at the chargers as well as some rechargables require specialist chargers.
Best power for value I have found is on 7day.com
Tom

The first thing I would get after reading your location and what you are shooting is two batterys and four 4 gig memory cards.
There would be nothing more dissapointing being out on the tundra and you fill a card up, or the battery mallfunctions due to the cold.
4x4gig cards because if one goes down you still have 3/4 of your images.
keep them warm though as they can be tempremental at extremes of temperature.

I will pm you

i have just looked at my d90 handbook and the grid can be switched on under the d2 section. shootin/display.
failing that there are spirit levels that fit into your hot shoe, for pennys on e-bay.
tom

I have looked at your picture of your set up, there are a number of suggestions that I would like to offer.
I would do one at a time to get a good image, First set up a teddy bear in the chair and move the light to the left hand side, then check the white balance on your camera. (was it set to flash and the lowest iso?) This will give you more room to move the light back as distance from light to subject is critical. Then I would look at the power of your light, if its adjustable then turn it down to reduce the amount of light. If not clip a piece of greaseproof paper/muslin/ect over the front of your light so its diffused.
Use your modelling light to get what I call the magic triangle. The triangle from the width of the eye down the cheek should match the edge of the shadow from the nose.
You most adjust the angle to subject and height of light to achieve this. Then use of a reflector below and to the right would help as a fill in reflector.(I am a cheep skate and use a foil cut from a six pack of crisps stuck onto an a4 card from the back of a pad held in place with crocodile clips)
set your your camera flash in commander mode or use a small strip of black electrical tape over your built in flash with a clear drinking straw(cut to length) taped horizontally to trigger your flash with no light going to the subject.
These are a few practical tips that mey help you get your head round lighting.

Tom

A basic rule that I was told about to get your images noticed first is to crop them in Portrate mode.
To prove this go into your supermarket and try and see a packaging that is in landscape mode!!!!!!!!!
if you crop the swan in portrate mode as RMM sugesed IMHO you would have an award winning picture.

yes i am guilty, cant move for magazines,books, studio lights that never seem to get put away,props that I buy in case I need one on a later shoot if it comes off. but it's great ain't it.

just pm'd you

some of the responces I used from stand up.
"Can you put the lid back on that dust bin(trash can)"
"next time you buy a bin can you make sure it has a lid."
"Can you flush that orafice next to you."
"Can you put the muzzle back onto the dog next to you"
If I am out and there is a que jumper I ask "do you like fish?" and the responce then is "there is a place behind me"
Or if I am talking to an Idiot "If I wanted a silly burger(bugger) I would have gone to macdonnalds for one."
Or my favoriate at the moment is
"you have the face photoshop was made for."

I am in england, but the other side of the country so local knowledge I cant help with, What are you interested in?
Is there anything that you realy want to know about?
Perhaps I can help.
Tom

Hi Linda.

your amazon cart remark is possable akey.
Do you have a local indipendant camera dealer?Go and make best friend with them, show them a few of your images, so they can critique them. They will be a lot more informative on your problems than a book.
But hey what do I know? only what works for me.
Tom

I dont know if my advice is relavant as I only now about England, but my two penneth would be if there are camera clubs in your area then join more than one. mix with like minded people and if they have competions then enter them for an indipendent critique.
Two sites that you could look at to help you.
Garage glamour, and Model Mayhem could be a sourse of models on a tfp basis.
tom

I would think it would be different in camera, the reason is I have a d80 and d90. but my cs4 would only open the d80's untill I down loaded a special patch for the d90's.
This would indicate that each type of model chip has a different type of camera raw.

I dont want to get into an argument, but I didn't sugest that any format was better than another.
I have just looked at an image that I have taken and saved on to a memory card at the same time, raw file size is 7708kb,jpeg fine which is the largest detail in the jpeg range is 2712kb. where has all that detail and information gone?
Again I have just opened this jpeg file in elements10 and then closed it without doing anything the file size was 2540kb where did this information go?
Recently I read on an American forum that photographers rave about English magazines and one of the points was the amount of technical information included in magazies, where magazines in the americas were full of adverts, I dont know as I havent seen a magazine from the americas.
But I tend to trust people like Gavin Hoey a well respected
teacher and published technical wrighter on numerious english Photography Magazines. and the "rubber gloves" was a quote from a lecture I attended.Also have attended my third lecture by Will Chung editor of Advanced Photographer Magazine, and the only save in jpeg as the last save before printing was his advice.
Plase dont think I am telling you what you must do, as this is the farthest from mind.
You will do what you think is best.
I am only passing on information that I have been given by what I am lead to beleive are two of Adobe's senior beta testers regarding file formats.