Ditto

Anyone use or recommend some close up filters for a Nikon? Don;t really wanna splash out on a full macro lens just yet, but have been reading that some +2, +4 etc filters give good magnification while maintaining decent pic quality - is that right??

Have a look on 7dayshop

final 12 pics to make next years countryfile calendar revealed in tonights programme.
my 3 favourites are..........


best friends
right to roam
and
pulling power.
but all 12 are worthy of a place in the calendar.

Is there a link for that, Cornish?

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t0bvTry here[/url My favourite is "Guard of Honour" It's a place in Northern Ireland called "The Dark Hedges" that I'd love to visit and photograph

Not sure whether to put this on here or the Tech thread - feel free to move it BG!

I have a Fuji S7000 camera with a 1GB CF (Type II) memory card which thinks its funny hide things from me.

Have just returned from a two week holiday where my holiday "snaps" tend to be of the collecting reference details for future paintings that are sold to finance the next holiday etc, so I'm not amused by losing around 200 or so pictures of Corfiot villages and such like.

Before I started the holiday I "Erased All" from the media card (not formated, just erased) and set the resolution to 6mp which should have given me enough room for 340 or so photos.

In the first week I did notice one occasion where the camera failed to save a photo and one photo which gave a "Read Error" message when trying to review it, you could scroll backwards beyond that bad image though and still see everything else. The only other point to note was that when scrolling forward from the last image it also gave a "Read Error" message when normally it would take you back to the first image in a scrolling type menu.

During the second week I suddenly noticed that while the image count was still incrementing correctly I now only had around 10 images viewable instead of around 200 but it still continued to save additional images correctly - didn't panic too much at that point because I know that I DEFINTELY hadn't pressed the erase option (you have to confirm several times) and once before in the past I had accidently pressed the "Protect All" option which prevents you from reviewing/deleting them.

Have just done a "Unprotect All" option this morning but can still only see 20 or so images.

Not happy.

So, is there any way to read anything that is on that card, any magical software that I can download that will reveal all of my next three months reference work or is this a write off and do I start to browse the various photobucket type sites to snaffle other peoples reference photos of Corfu Town ?

I knew I should have taken an easel and some paint...

Ah what the hell, just spent £26 on CardRecovery and recaptured 294 images from the memory card so am a happy bunny again.

Maybe this now becomes a Tech thread thing but why should that have happened, why did they disappear when they were obviously there all along, is the card faulty, would it be advisable to reformat it in the camera now or throw it away ?

On the disk you have the files, and you have the equivalent of an address book that says where the files live. Reasons for why the address book gets corrupted vary from the software in the camera is a little buggy through to the card itself is screwed.

Little difference really between "erase all" and "format". In the former it will remove all entries from the address book but leave the files alone. In the latter it will create a new address book from scratch, write it over the old one but leave the files alone. It has more work to do with "erase all".

I would be unlikely to trust that card myself, but it might be worth going down the format route and then trying to fill it with things you don't care about to see if you have confidence in it.

My rule of thumb for years now has been that a storage device lets me down ONCE and once only.

After the recovery process (or abandonment thereof) the card, disc, HD, whatever gets binned.

New Camera

Not so much cloud tonight, pretty good conditions to shoot the moon...

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueskyxiii/6145340144/[/url

Thats a proper good shot of the moon.

What would be the minimum requirement lense to get a good clear shot of the moon?

Cheers





Not sure I can answer that, others may be able to provide more useful answers.

The shot above was taken with a 200mm lens with a 1.7x teleconverter and a 2x teleconverter giving a total of 680mm. I have taken reasonable shots at both 200mm and 340mm respectively but obviously the moon appears smaller in the image, though you can still capture some detail.
Most of the people I exchange views with on Flickr are using scopes and they get better results.

That is a stonking picture.... my 11 yr old son has asked me to print it out so he can stick on one his school books...hope your ok with that, where do I send the £100000 fee for ripping off your pic ha ha

Hi all I have had a Nikon D40 for about 3 years and am looking to upgrade. There are so many options out there, I have done some research but the more I read the more undecided I am. I mainly use for sports, but want to do some portraits etc.. any suggestions? I like the feel and weight of my Nikon, so would be more than happy to stay with the brand. Budget of around £700.

That's a difficult budget band for a Nikon body. (I'm assuming body only cos you'll no doubt have lenses already for your D40.

It's not enough for a pro-am body like a D300s (circa £1K) but less than £700 only buys bodies which aren't massive upgrades from your D40.

Does seem like that amount falls between ranges.

If you are leaning towards staying with Nikon it may be worth trying to PM Ginger Jon. At some point in the past I think he upgraded from a D40 to a D90 - he may be able to offer you some advice.

Also I believe vbfg has moved through the Nikon range as well.

Like LBWR I am not sure that anything less than £700 will get you much of an upgrade however I suppose the considerations would be perhaps the D90, D7000 or D300s.

Ginger Jon or vbfg may be able to offer useful advice about the D90 and what this offers over the D40, otherwise you may be looking at one of the other two models or perhaps a second hand body.

Nice shot. I would only add first, try quarter moons and anything but a nearly full moon, much more interesting due to shadows; a really good steady tripod is also a must - especially the longer the lens. Finally, did you know that a black cat in sunlight is approx 20,000 X brighter than a full moon?

Thanking you.

I do shoot other phases of the moon from time to time and you're spot on that they are more interesting. I only got the camera out for this one because the sudden appearance of fur on the back of my hands suggested the time was right - unfortunately the weather wasn't and I was a day late.

My kit is of mixed quality. The 200mm lens and 1.7x teleconverter are both top notch pieces of kit and I can get pretty much the same detail with just these two shooting at 340mm - just a smaller image of the moon. The addition of a further (dirt cheap) 2x teleconverter gives me a bigger image but with little improvement in the quality. Can't justify buying a higher quality 2x teleconverter so this combination will have to do.

Spot on regarding the tripod, sound advice.

As regards the last fact, I will take your word for that.

Oh, not me, but the genius that is astronomer Bob Berman. He did an article recently about albedo, which is on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 being zero reflectivity and 1 pure white. Fresh snow is 0.9, the planet Venus about 0.7. Anyway, it turns out the albedo of the Moon from Earth is only about 0.08, which is about the same as black paint.

The brightest streaks on your image are about the same "brightness" as wet soil in daylight!

I did indeed, although it was the oft-forgotten D40X I made the leap from.

The step-up isn't huge - the D90 still has most of the fall-back modes you expect from an entry camera but it's well-built and responds nice and quick, and can fire off a decent number of frames per second. Quality in RAW is excellent and in jpg pretty impressive. I don't know how it compares to newer entry price cameras but compared to the D40(X) it has more AF options and is faster to find focus - you can also use it to control slave flashes, which I don't think you can on entry level cameras. You can find it body only for about £500.

The flattest water I've ever seen coupled with the sun at the right angle had me rapidly pulling the car over to grab this shot near Coniston yesterday...

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/iainp/6163529462/[/url

WOW.