greenslime89

I don't see why they'd be flawed when using longer lenses but there would be an issue with focusing and recomposing (something you could avoid by using AF and selecting the AF point you need) From what I read with the slower lens such as zoom lens at wider aperture such focus screens go near black and thus make it near impossible to use. Well that's true (kind of) the slower lens lets less light through (especially at narrower apertures) and it can be very hard to use. But for stationary subjects you can focus wide open then stop down and shoot. That's what I do with my cheapo macro lens (but I don't have the manual focusing screen - so I expect a lower number of keepers, but stopping down gives me a better keeper rate).

I don't see why they'd be flawed when using longer lenses but there would be an issue with focusing and recomposing (something you could avoid by using AF and selecting the AF point you need)

If you've ever used a non AF SLR you'll notice that the viewfinder is completely different to you camera's. The MF screens generally take advantage of our vernier acuity - our ability to determine alignment. So it splits the image up and if the image is focused you'll see a single image but if it isn't in then you'll see a displaced part of the image in the ring (microprism screen) or prism (split prism). There's some good info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing_screen

There is a focusing screen in the viewfinder. That's what I was talking about. In my body it's just a case of pulling the old one out from above the mirror and putting a new one in. But I don't know it's as simple as that for your body.

I'd recommend you get a manual focus screen for your body as the standard screen isn't geared towards manual focus. My idea of stopping down was to include boosting the ISO (maintaining the shutter speed) and increasing the depth of field - limiting the effect of poor focusing. Higher ISOs do produce noisier images but a noisy image is always better than a blurry out of focus or shaky image.

Maybe if you bumped up the ISO and stopped down the lens to increase depth of field (and used AI Servo) you'd get sharper shots. Dunno if that's any help.

I see what you mean about the grey tone to some of them, I think it works on the first one - makes the building seem more imposing but I'll see if playing with the white balance to produce a warmer tone gives me any improvement.

Yeah I dunno what's going on with the flare - the lens is prone to flare but I don't understand why there are purple tinges to the tops of arches. Should probably have shot some shots for the HDRs in manual instead of bracketing as I did go as far out as +/-3 in all of them :S

Some HDRs what I made:

The scene may well have been right for HDR, but in your final image you've got an awful lot of detail lost in the clouds. As you rightly said, the point of HDR is to over expose one shot for detail in the darker areas, under expose to get the detail in the brighter areas and expose properly to get the mid tones. You didn't really under expose enough to capture the detail in the clouds.

I'd have thought that if you've got a foreground that you can expose perfectly, but over expose the sky in doing so, and vice versa, an ND grad would be simpler to use than HDR? I'm just gonna echo what the other peoples have said, as it's spot on.

I use photoshop for HDRs. I tried using photomatix but it kept crashing. I couldn't "acquire" a 64bit version so was using the 32bit - it worked fine till I tried to save anything. Selecting the images in lightroom and merging as HDR in photoshop was very simple.

Nah just Flickr. Flickr.com/photos/rssmrry is my stream.

Updated again :)

Nice tone to that photo, could do without the border. I take it you went to ebay.com instead of ebay.ca? :-P

Fleabay is where it's at! That's the lens though yep. I haven't bought anything from a physical camera shop for years.

Can I recommend the Tamron 90mm f/2.5 SP Adaptall Mount Macro (manual focus but fantastic lens) and if you're into bird photography the Sigma 400mm f/5.6 HSM Telemacro? The macro isn't true 1:1 but you can get a set of manual extension tubes for about £10 which will take it to greater than life size reproduction. You could pick up either for around £100, which is pretty cheap for good quality lenses!

1. I like this - and I totally get the difficulty of getting a dog to hold a pose while you get the composition just right! The tilting is a bit much but gives the impression that the dog is just about to tootle off! 2. I'd probably have put the flower on the intersection of the lower and left hand third line to get rid of the out of focus foliage which is a bit distracting 3. Love it - only thing I'd do is maybe straighten the horizon in the background. Very nice mood to this photo. 4. I'd like to see how it looks with a longer exposure, but it looks very bright so that probably wasn't possible. I'd maybe have had the foreground rocks in focus as opposed to those further back. Still a nice capture. 5. Can't fault this one at all, love it it has everything needed for a b/w conversion, the texture, the moody sky. Superb

Updated!

Updated

Updated.

I've boosted the saturation of the background, so the sky is a nicer blue, but I had to clone out the halo around the bird that resulted from this. I think it's a big improvement. What do you think? Original: Edited (with halo): Finished:

Ah it's a good point, the sky wasn't 100% blue, quite hazy today, plus for some of the shots the background was cloud. I'll see if I can boost the saturation of just the background!

Updated!

The ISO does make a difference. I always shoot with the lowest ISO I'm able to get away with (partly because my camera doesn't control noise very well). If you lower the ISO, you'll have to use a wider aperture to maintain the shutter speed.