Hi John,

I use 2x converters, but manual ones. For AF, although I've not used one, the Pentax 1.7x AF converter seems to be the popular choice here, and because the converter itself focusses internally regardless of lens, it can also be used for AF with manual lenses.. within certain parameters anyway.

If you use a 2x converter, you're effectively giving away 2 stops worth of light. This means that at the long end of your 70-300 even wide open, the minimum f-stop is going to be equivalent to F11. That will be dark.. and slow. In theory, 300mm (focal length) is meant to be at about the limit for hand holding (at 1/300 sec (big ish)), and at F11, you really will want a bright subject to have much chance of a good shot without the extra stability of a tripod or monopod.

Of course, using the DL, that's means a 450mm focal length, and 1/500 sec at F11.

I'm sure I started out with the intention of writing that in English.. but now, I'm not so sure.

I think that's right anyway, but I stand to be corrected.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Portman, and welcome to the forum,

I use XPH at home, have a W98 FE box, that hasn't seen electric in a year, an old lappy on W95, and W2K at work.. Oh, and I admin an old W98 SE machine at the local club. One of these days, I'll get a Linux box running as well.. probably the old W98 I have at home..

Thankfully I've not had the misfortune to use ME in a while, but until last year, I had an NT4 box at work.

Apart from that, I don't use any of the others..

Just out of curiosity, why the interest?

Cheers

Liam

Hmm strange. The whole gallery container (everything in mottled blue) is only 530 pixels in height. Even with a screen res of 800x600, you should see it all.

Scratches head.. :

Cheers

Liam

Hi all,

I've been busy today on the rebuild of my website, with the main intention having really posh photo galleries. Although this gallery style is basically nicked from a tutorial, I've done some rewriting of the code so it does what I want.. (for those interested, it works on the :hover property , so there's no Javascript used; which is obviously handy if people have it switched off)

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/marwell1.shtml

I haven't had time to get the layout ready for portrait style images yet, but that'll happen over the weekend.. hopefully I'll have the time, I'm still trying to come up with graphics ideas, although I think that the camera image for the gallery is one of my better works (basic idea copied again).

Please let me know what you think, and more importantly if you notice any bugs. I know that's a bit of a cheek.. although I've tested in IE, Avant, Opera and Firefox and it's all good.

Cheers

Liam

Cheers Peter,

I took niblue's advice of using a little fill in flash with the duck, just to get the glint off both the eye and the droplets of water.. cheers niblue.

I'll have another look at the photos tomorrow, and see if I can find some more for a second gallery, but it's probably not going to happen. I took 320 pictures, and these 16 are really the only ones that stand out. Most of the others are technically competant (IMHO) but don't have that extra something to seperate them from snapshots.

I took several of the meercat (singular, as the look out was the only one not wrapped up in their house), so I might have a play with adding some sort of background, for a laugh. I've got some genuine images of Kenya, or I might just use Bracknell's Council buildings.. err!! I work for them, so I'd better stop there.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

I've put up a little gallery here..

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/galleries/Marwell1/index.html

although I'm not too impressed with the way a couple have come out now. I think I over did the processing a touch in two or three of them, so I'll sort that out tomorrow.. off for a beer now.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Peter, and thanks.

This happened as we were about to move on to the next enclosure. Something startled the bird, and it decided to "fly" (I believe their wings are clipped) to the next pond. I saw it start and just fired shots at it.. I got lucky with this one. With wild animals, whether they're in a zoo or in the wild, I guess the best way to get the shot is take lots of them, and cross your fingers.

I got a nice one of a couple of wallabies as well. One of them was looking straight at me and licking his lips. I fired off a few shots and got the intended one.. him (?) staring at me and sticking his tongue out at me. If I knew the first thing about selling photos, it would be a good "funny" post/birthday card.

I suppose you could always place the flamingoes between yourself and the setting sun and throw a few pebbles in the water near them and see if they take off in the right direction!!

Cheers

Liam

Hi all,

Yesterday was my birthday, and my prefered way of spending the day is to visit a zoo or safari park. I went to Marwell Zoo armed with my camera, and took around 320 pictures, I've got lots that I like, and I'll put up a link to a gallery on my site, when I get a chance to sort them out properly. This was one of my favourites, as water fowl have been an ongoing theme..




*ist DL | FA 100-300 | lens at 300 (450) | 1/500th sec. @ f8 | ISO 200

The only adjusting I've had to do is to brighten it up by about 1/2 a stop.

The only problem with a lot of the enclosures is that there is no way of avoiding the cage/netting etc. I've managed to get around it where possible, but I have quite a few nice snapshots of these animals and birds, even if they will never be published.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Matt,

I don't know about the D, but the DL allows you to switch on an audible beep when focus is achieved (for both manual and AF), which is accessed from the menu.. somewhere.

It's useful in bright sunshine if you can't see the settings in the viewfinder very well.

I'm just off out, but it's there somewhere.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

I think most people know I code by hand anyway. I don't use note pad though, I use Coffee Cup. It's basically a text format, but when you are just starting out, you can use a bit of wysiwyg to help you on your way.

Dreamweaver and Frontpage tend to throw in lots of superfluous code, that does nothing to enhance the site, but can confuse some browsers.

Check out w3c's site for loads of info on how to write your own code. w3c is the definitive source for getting your code written correctly to the latest code conventions.

Cheers

Liam