Hi,

thanks for the info. It was the trigger voltage that was worrying me. I've just got the camera out of the box; it arrived 20 minutes ago, so I'm having a play with it setting it up at the moment. I've just set the language to Chinese and as I'm not fluent in it.. !!! I'm off to tour Google to set that up now.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

having used the old ME Super for a long time until it started feeling it's age, I've bought the *ist DL with 18-55 kit lens (which according to UPS's tracking system I should be unwrapping in a few hours ) I have lots of lenses and stuff ready to use.

I also have two flash guns, the Pentax AF200S (three pins on the base, if that matters) and a Sunpak 3600 Auto Zoom

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sunpak-Camera-Flash-Unit-Auto-Zoom-Not-Canon-Olympus_W0QQitemZ7576475140QQcategoryZ15221QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

(Disclaimer: I'm not selling this, just identifying the model to anyone who hasn't seen it)

Can I use them with my new camera? The ME had a coax socket so I could plug and play with the Sunpak. It's handy if you want to instantly blind 200+ people at a wedding reception. But the main reason is to use it at some point as a freestanding flash for portrait work, which would be a newish venture for me.

Cheers

Liam

Hi SPB,

Don't worry too much about that with the DL.. I've had mine just over a week now and finally worked out how to get "focus confirmation" with fully manual lenses. Basically even though the lens tells the camera nothing, the AF sensor beeps* at you when the subject is in focus by looking through the lens and determining the distance etc.

Basic settings for this are..

Set front switch to MF
Set mode dial to M

Press the Menu button on the back of the camera and in the Record Mode settings, change the AF area to Spot.

In the C (custom menu) set FI with S lens to permitted (2).
Set using aperture ring to permitted (2).

It doesn't want to work in low light from what I can see, but daylight is fine, and I was copying slides** over a light box last night, and that worked well. It' very difficult to manually focus to the exact distance when the object is 0.5mm thick..

Anyone feel free to correct any of those settings, I've played with them a lot of the last week, but that seems to do it.

Hope that helps..

Cheers

Liam

*You can turn the beep off in Menu | Set Up | Beep, if you need silence, and still have the visual indicator of focus in the viewfinder.

**Handy hint: If you've got a 35mm slide copier lens, it will lose approx 33% in width and height when used on a digital CCD, but using a macro lens with RAW over a light box, mine's homemade, does the job at least as well.

Hi,

not usurping you at all Matt, but I have the list of worldwide service offices in front of me, so I thought I'd say what it says.

Central Trading Co., Ltd (tel 66-2-29-7000/7674
3388/25-37, 51-53, and 82-85 Srinrat Building 8-11th,15th,
23rd Floor Rama 4 Rd. Klong-Toey Bangkok 100110

I assume that somewhere in that jumble of numbers there's an address..

Again, this is for information. Take Matt's advice around these parts.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Don,

although it's frowned upon in certain circles, adding the tag..

target="_blank"

in the html string will work every time.

ie.

<a href="/image603.jpg"><img src="/img603tn.jpg" target="_blank" alt="image number 603"></a>

will open the thumbnail 603tn.jpg into a new window containing the full sized image 603.jpg. It'll work every time, but some people don't like it's use. There are also options using scripts such as javascript that will do the same job, except that in these internet security concious days, js is switched off by many users.

You can also target to a specific page that contains the image, with maybe text and background. I've also seen some css based gallery code that looks great, and gives you complete control over viewing. That's more advanced though, and to complicated to show here. I've got a link somewhere that explains it in detail, and will post that tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure that there are other ways of doing the same thing with xhtml (I'll look them up in the morning and either explain them or post tutorial links) but the above will work across every browser after about IE3.

I'll post more explanation in the morning.. I'm 5 pints closer to ma bid as they say.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Don,

no problem. Here's a couple of links for you..

Tutorials on HTML and css..

http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

Free HTML editor (You can use this to write any code whatsoever used in web sites, from HTML, XML, css, Java... you name it.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/388389

That'll get you going. Just ask if you need any help. That goes for anyone else as well of course..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Don,

my first post. As I intend to glean helpful hints on an almost constant basis, I thought I'd start out helping someone.

Visually it's pretty good.. and the photography is lovely. The only real problem is your use of frames. They're just about defunct now, being taken over by css divs, which are far easier to work with, and friendlier with different browsers/screen resolutions. This is the reason why in IE6 at 1024 you have a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the main frame.

You can also use predifined css classes for all of the table cells, so instead of having to repeat for instance..


every time you add an image, you'd put in a couple of chunks of css..


(You'll notice that I've shown how, with a quick copy/paste, there are now image classes for both landscape and portrait. You'd also use css to determine the main parameters for the tables as well.)

and then all you'd have for the html of each cell/image would be..


It tidies up the code a little bit, but the biggest advantage is that if you suddenly wake up one morning and decide that your thumbnails should be 160x120 instead of 124x100, instead of rewriting every line of code through out the site, you just find these two bits of code in your css file..


..and change them to..


A 30 second job instead of a couple of hours; or if you have a couple of thousand thumbnails, it being a pro site, maybe a few days..

There are many other ways that you can make the management easier when you go .com such as SSI, which will mean you spend your time taking photos, not maintaining the site.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

http://www.diaxa.com/weston/othermakes.htm

I found this yesterday. I've got a Hanimex Sekonic as shown about half way down the page.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Golf,

it is a nicely built bit of kit isn't it. I used mine for the last lot of macro shots I did, and it just made it so much easier, especially as I was wandering around the set up with a handheld flash at various angles.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Golf,

I contacted them prior to receiving my cover. I just got their reply..

I know the English is a little broken, but having received that, I would think that your remote is very likely to turn up as normal.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Liam