I got to use the 23" cinema screen for the first time yesterday, that thing is amazing.  But I guess what's bad about it is that it shows every single flaw in a photograph.  It makes me want to chuck my D70 camera, I can't believe how many of my digital photos are *slightly* out of focus and it's all the AF's fault or there's a slight amount of camera shake you can't see from a normal monitor or certainly on the camera's LCD.  They just dropped the price a bit on the cinema screens to $999 for the 23 inch and $699 for the 20 inch.  Now that I've used one I think it's worth it for one if you're doing photography, you can immediately spot and diagnose small equipment and technique problems you wouldn't see otherwise.  And it decisively shows the superiority of older prime lenses over newer zoom lenses.  My $80 50mm smokes my $900 12-24 zoom.  You just plain can't see the difference on laptops and smaller screens.   

 

 

 

^interesting observations.

 

I agree that the larger screens really show the flaws in a photograph, but that's always a good thing. On smaller screens, it can be harder to work in Photoshop. I currently use a 19-inch flat panel (which is suitable for me since I do more video than photography), and constantly find myself having to zoom in and scroll around photos to make sure everything is fine. It can get annoying after a while...

 

With a 23-inch cinema display, I probably wouldn't have to do that as much.

 

And about prime lenses- they've always been better than zooms. Zooms have improved over the last couple of decades, but they still can't match a good prime. I use my zoom very rarely, because it doesn't have the corner sharpness of my better primes. I think the theory that a prime lens is easier to construct (simpler design, therefore a better image) holds as much water today as it did in 1970.

 

I can't believe how many of my digital photos are *slightly* out of focus and it's all the AF's fault

 

I never trust AF no matter what medium I'm shooting in (35mm still photography, mini-dv video, 16mm motion picture film, etc.). AF is never as critical as the human eye. It's much better now than it used to be, but still flawed. The only time I consider using AF is for low resolution work (like low budget movie production, which even in HD or 16mm is only about 2-3 megapixels of resolution). I'd never use AF for any still photography over 3 megapixels. Once you get bigger than that, things can look soft.

 

My attitude has always been if the subject matter requires it, shoot AF (like fast-paced documentary work). But, if you have ANY time to manual focus, do it.

Actually I sold my 12-24 back in January, I'm going to get Nikon's 14mm to replace it but have been slumming with a 20mm this year as my widest lens.  The 14's are $1,000 used but it's worth it.  The 12-24 works fine for anything in the dark like concert photos but for outdoor architectural photos it's a mess.  You are stuck using f/5.6 or f/8.0, otherwise things get nutty in the periphery and combine that with a smudge on the filter or the sensor and some lens flare and you've got a mess.  And no, you can't just correct the distortion in Photoshop for any sort of large output.  It'll always be slightly wavy. 

The 14mm is a 2.8, the 12-24mm is 4.0 throughout its range.  For some reason it's really hard to find examples of images shot with the 14mm on the web despite there being a lot of them out there floating around.  Nikon came out with this lens in 1999, at the same time as the D1.  It's about 21mm on a DX sensor camera and obviously ridiculously wide on a film camera.  I don't know how sharp it is at 2.8 but I'm sure it's better across the frame than the 12-24, which is generally good in the center but deteriorates rapidly in the corners.  For photojournalism and events, you really do need the 2.8. 

 

If you are interested in solid, rectilinear wide angle performance, skip 35mm/digital and either get what is called a Cambo Wide or an old Hasselblad SWC.  On ebay either cost just a little more than any of the new 14mm lenses on the market.  For photojournalim and events obviously you need the 14mm lens.  I had the Hassy SWC for awhile, the performance is incredible. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it decisively shows the superiority of older prime lenses over newer zoom lenses.  My $80 50mm smokes my $900 12-24 zoom.  You just plain can't see the difference on laptops and smaller screens.   

I don't know much about optics and the difference in quality of lenses but if you want clarity, stay away from compact cameras. People like the idea of having a small gadget that's so functional but larger ones have bigger CCDs resulting in less noise/more brightness.

^Part of the problem is that compact cameras always have zooms on them because that's what people think they need and these small zooms are garbage.  When I worked at a camera store the cheapest Olympus P&S actually had the best lens because it was a fixed prime.  It cost like $80 and of course no customers believed me when I said it was better than the $300 cameras in the same line.  Unfortunately I haven't seen any digital P&S's with fixed prime lenses.  If they made something like the Canon Elph with a fixed lens, I'd get it.

This just in, Zeiss is expanding its line of new manual focus lenses for the Nikon F mount.  These will of course work on all manual cameras and so far amongst digital SLR's the D200 and D2X.  The lens I'm most excited about is the 25mm f/2.8, it being at least 20 years newer than Nikon's AF or manual lenses in that range, perhaps it will be a solid improvement.  Here is the link:

 

http://www.zeiss.de/c12567a8003b58b9/Contents-Frame/acc411c7fe134667c12571ec004db061

 

 

Well the wide angle lens has been rendered partially obsolete by Photoshop's photomerge function. 

 

This was shot with the $80 50mm lens, and before reducing the file size it was 10,000 pixels wide, a much higher res image than anything possible with any existing DSLR and wide angle lens:

 

 

It's now possible for someone with a cheap DSLR to take massive super-high resolution landscape photos with a normal lens.  Yet we will still be subjected to endless internet debates about wide angle lenses by people who don't take very many photos.  Someone actually invented a device where a telephoto lens is sent through a precise pattern with a robotic tripod and can create 1,000 mp images, but not even that is necessary to create fantastic big prints.  Now only if there were actually walls out there in need of this kind of decoration.     

 

And here's what happens if you buy cheap memory cards (about 1 in 5 images couldn't be opened with this card):

 

Ouch.

 

I had a 6 GB Hitachi microdrive, and the reliability of those were very poor. Very slow read/write speeds, and I continuously received odd error messages. Same with a Lexar CF card. Any Lexar card.

 

I use two 4 GB SanDisk Extreme III CF cards, and I am thinking of splurging for a Extreme IV card for speed.

That green image reminds me of what I used to see when I saved images on my comp's broken hard drive.  I'd get cyclic redundancy checks and they al looked like this LOL.  Then I got smart and put them on an external hard drive.

I didn't have any problems with CF cards (maybe 1 in 15,000 shots were corrupted) until getting a D300 and using the same generic 4gb card I had been using for two yeas without incident with a D70.  At first I thought is was the camera but as soon as I switched to a Sandisk II card the problems went away.  Something about the D300's file writing caused the generic card to geek out and I think it's because the write speed is so much faster.  It did it with jpegs or with RAW files, which makes me think it was the write speed, not the larger file size.  But it was fun watching the files mess up in endlessly varied ways. 

 

I don't think a Sandisk IV card is necessary unless you are shooting sports with RAW files, and nobody does that.  No professional photographer can afford the hard disk space that would be necessary to store a couple hundred GB's of sports photos every month.  Not only would you be filling up a 1tb drive every six weeks, you'd actually be filling up two because you need to back it up. 

 

 

Hmm, so are you saying you'd have image corruption right on the card?

 

Here was my problem.  I saved a batch of NYC photos on my computer's hard drive from my Nikon.  I also had brought my smaller more compact Cannon along and took pictures in Philly.  Both cities were in the same folder.  I have a bad hard drive on my laptop so I backed them up on an external fortunately.  Later on, the photos in that folder got corrupted and I got a ton of CRC messages.  I noticed the canon photos didn't get messed up, but the Nikon ones did.  It was almost as if Canon jpgs stood up better to the abuse than nikon photos.  I guess it really doesn't matter if you back up your photos.  But it's prevented me from saving on my computers hard drive.  I also backed them up an additional external just in case my primary external hard drive fails.

 

The rendering for my nikon photos on D40 that undergo a CRC error are gray instead of green.  But I've seen them in all sorts of colors.

 

 

Visible scanline render error of a corrupted image on my PC.  What happens when you shut down improperly at least 600 times in your comps lifetime.

 

 

 

Yeah, it can be caused a lot by cheap cards, but don't forget there's also people who pull their cards out of the camera without shutting off first.  I knew this one guy who used to do that all the time and then get pissed off at his camera when he'd go to view them and some were messed up.  I find the best way is to buy a high capacity, good quality memory card and use the firewire cable that comes with your camera to connect to the PC as opposed to using slots.

I have swapped CF cards with people shooting other types of cameras at events and you end up with multiple folders on your card.  I seem to remember that in-camera formatting didn't necessarily get the extra folders off the card, you actually had to delete them while they were hooked up to the computer.  The great thing about that though is you got to see images from the same event shot with different brands of cameras.  All these people on the internet who talk the talk about equipment have never had those kinds of real world side-by-side comparisons. 

 

 

>I also backed them up an additional external just in case my primary external hard drive fails.

 

Yeah I've always had two external hard drives with the same things on them and keep one at home and one at work in case there's a fire or something but I've never had one fail.  The big problem with "advances" in digital photography is the higher res cameras need better computers and way more storage space for files which eats heavily into the advantage digital has over film in that you don't have to pay for film and processing.

Yesterday, I used my friend's AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G lens at a battlefield re-enactment in Kentucky. I dropped down to as low as 1/60 and 1/50 for fun, and had VR enabled, and the photographs came out sharp as a tack. Coupled with Continuous-Slow and Fast modes, I was able to capture the action with no delay. I was writing on a CF Type III card in RAW 14-bit format, and was able to shoot as many as 30 images in a row with no delay. I only did that once at the end just to see the capabilities of the camera, the card and the lens, and I came out very impressed.

 

Portraits with it have turned out very nicely as well. Beats my plain jane AF-S Zoom- NIKKOR 70-200mm f/4.5-5.6G!

If that's the 70-300 I think it is you should probably prioritize getting something else, depending on what if anything else you already own in that range.  Basically any prime lens new or used is going to beat that zoom (and there are many used ones in that range for under $500) and until you get up to the $1500~ range there isn't a zoom that will decisively improve on it.  The rarely seen 135 f/2.8 and 180 f/2.8 both beat any tele zoom and sell used for around $400-500 on KEH.com.  There is also the older version of the 300 f/4 which sells used for around $450, another fantastic lens.  I have shot with the 80-200 zooms and vastly prefer the lighter weight and better optics of the primes. 

Corrected my post above. 70-200.

 

A prime will always beat a zoom, but a zoom has much more versatility, especially for action photography, which is what I was doing Saturday. The lens weighs as much as my D3, and I can't imagine carrying around an assortment of primes for one event. Granted VR doesn't do all that much for action, it does help with the panning.

 

I've used the AF 180mm f/2.8D ED-IF but I hate the fact it takes 72mm filters when most have switched to 77mm, which makes the telescoping hood all but pointless.