John, I have an MZ-5n here not doing much. Good condition apart from the flash doesn't raise - the spring's gone in it, a common fault I gather. I never used the flash so it didn't bother me, but if it's something you need then that would obviously be a problem.










Would be looking for about £45 o.n.o., and I'm local to you so could drop it off when I'm next your way. New CR2 batteries included, and there's even a roll of Velvia in it (although I can vouch for how that would be now... ).

Let me know if you're interested.

Dan

The lighting's brought out the plumage beautifully, and it looks nicely detailed. In an ideal world the background could be less busy, but it's not an ideal world, is it?

Nice shot.

Dan

I don't suppose the lens is being made just for the UK market.

Dan

I tend to use a 50mm lens, with the camera in portrait format, and just do the overlap by eye - i.e. if panning from left to right, note what's in view on the right hand side, and pan across making sure I can still see it on the left.

Longer lens means less distortion at the edges of the image so it's easier to match up with its neighbour. However, it will mean more images to cover the same field of view.

Here are a few examples, the first two took about 12-14 shots, and cover about 150 degrees. The third was with a zoom lens, I think set to about 35mm, five shots (the house does lean like that ).










Needless to say, this size doesn't do them justice. Top two are over 10,000 pixels wide, bottom one over 5,000 (49Mb file).

I merge them by hand - as long as the lighting stays constant, and you've got everything levelled up okay, it's not too time consuming, just eats up a lot of RAM.

Dan

Well judged Rob, and well done to Gary for his excellent shot, really liked Namstoop's pic too, would have probably won it if I'd been the judge...

I don't know to be honest, probably not. It's my brother's car, he was driving and we had the roof down so I just held the camera above the windscreen and guessed the framing. The interior's a lovely rich red colour, for some reason I think the car may have been cream originally (maybe just because I think it would be a nice combination).

Dan

*istD, Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm, f/8, 1/10s, ISO400, Triumph Vitesse

Oh, I knew what they were, but I've just never seen them in my photos taken with this lens, and I use this lens a lot, hence why I said "very specific set of conditions". I've shot into the light many times, just never seen aperture shapes like this.

Dan

Never noticed on mine either - must be a very specific set of conditions to produce them.

Dan

I often say that contrast is an excellent aid to composition, whether it's light and dark, rough/smooth, or as here, old/new.

I like this, but feel that the crop is a bit tight on the right hand side, I know that would make the central architrave not central anymore, but...

Anyway, I can't tell what's outside the frame and this may well have been the best composition.

Lastly, the image looks a bit washed out, and looking at the histogram shows space on the left hand side, which could have been used to add a bit more of that contrast.

Well observed.

Dan

Oh, okay, I have the old 055proB - can't say I've really noticed a problem but then I use a ball head and don't do video.

I find this tripod tall enough for me most of the time without the column extended, and never extend more than a few inches. Wouldn't have thought it made a huge amount of difference to the level. But, as ever, all depends on your application.

Not directing this at you Danny, but for anyone new to photography, when using a tripod, only extend the centre column as a last resort. The legs are much more stable, so extend these to the maximum before thinking about raising the column.

Dan