[OFB Cafe] Photographers?

[Timothy Butler]

> what i would do -- i had one of these and much regret selling it,
> especially now that i'm where the sky is clear at night -- is get  
> one of
> the meade or celestron products. i used to throw the old nikon f on  
> one
> for an effective 2000mm f11 (meaning that you couldn't use tri-x to  
> shoot
> pictures of the moon or they'd be overexposed). but fast enough to  
> make
> decent pictures of mars, jupiter, and saturn.

	Hmm... thanks for the suggestion. That is an intriguing idea! I may  
just do that...


> a 500 wouldn't, i think, be
> all that big an improvement over your 300.

	You may be right. I do get the sense though of, "if only I were a bit  
closer..." when shooting eagles and such with the 300mm. You can see  
them well enough, especially with the 1.6x crop factor of the APS-C  
sensor, but closer would still be nice.

> there are some who shot both nikons and leicas. i was among 'em. and  
> it was
> a pain finding focus, often. but the leicas were typically used for
> wide-angle work, which mostly didn't need much focusing anyway.
>
> ah, but i digress. what were we talking about?

	Uh, nothing important. That, on the other hand, was quite  
interesting. I never thought about the detail of the focusing ring  
direction and how it came about, thanks for sharing that.

> counter, it seems to me, to the telling moment. too often people  
> shoot a
> burst of five or 10 and in there someplace will be one of an instant
> before and an instant after the telling moment.

	I can see that, good point.

>
>
> | 	Of course, they keep making digital photography easier. My father
> | bought my mother a Sony DSC-H50 for her birthday awhile back. It's a
> | point and shoot superzoom (15x, goes to about 480mm equivalent). It
> | had not only face detection, which made it focus on faces, it also  
> had
> | "smile shutter," which made it wait to take the picture until the
> | subject smiled. It actually worked. But the pictures were noisy. I
> | talked her into a Canon Digital Rebel XSi (450D for those across the
> | pond), which has worked out much better...
>
> i think that persons who cannot detect faces all by themselves  
> probably
> shouldn't be taking pictures, anyway!

	True. But, I had a good idea with it. You know how at some kind of  
function, the guy with the camera tries to do the group photo and  
nearly trips and knocks the camera over as he tries to dash in front  
of the lens and get into something of a "natural" position? Well, with  
that feature it would be simple: just get everyone to frown (probably  
not hard anyway, if it is the third or fourth shot) until everyone is  
in position...

	-Tim


---
Timothy R. Butler | "Not  every end  is the  goal.  The end  of a
Editor, OfB.biz   | melody is not its goal,  and yet if  a melody
tbutler at ofb.biz   | has not  reached its end , it has not reached
timothybutler.us  | its goal."
                                            -- Friedrich Nietzsche