For those of you that shoot digital, since the Nikon wb setting for incandescent light is pretty bad, what do you guys do about it? I adjust wb manually through Photoshop but it would be a lot less hassle if there was a trick to do it through the camera. I had this problem on both the D70 and the D50 and it's plagued on the D40 as well, is it like this on the higher end D80/D200 as well?
When I'm shooting flash (iTTL), I am usually keeping it on WB-Auto. Any other lighting situation where I don't know the actual color temp of lighting, I "bracket" between all settings (flourescent, incandescent, etc.) with a test shot and then use that. You will be very surprised by what you get! I am generally making other adjustments in Photoshop like Brightness, Saturation, Unsharp mask and noise reduction.
I always shoot in RAW, but when I'm taking a shot in incandescent light, I manually set the white balance to Tungsten. Generally, I find it to be decent with reguard to the look of a shot. I can always tweak it later from a WhiBal test shot anyway.
I don't use UV filters. I've seen threads on fredmiranda where some guy was complaining about his new $1600 70-200VR lens giving awful images. After three pages of tests and comments, somebody asked if he was using any sort of filter on the lens. Took the $20 filter off, and suddenly the lens was perfect. I refuse to pay such large amounts of money for a lens, only to put a $20 piece of glass in front of it. I used to be high-quality filters for all my lenses, but realized life is short and things break, but I'd rather have a better image than whine about cleaning my glass once a month. I do like to use a filter whenever I'm on the beach shooting though, salty wind can get really nasty.
Your other thread inspired me to break out my own 35mm f/1.4 AIS lens the other night. I threw it on the mount and hopefully will get to use it within the next week or two. I really never gave it much of a chance, but now that I have full metering use with it (yay D2x!) I will give it a shot. I love that it's even closer to the ~50mm FOV too. I looked up my serial number on that webpage and found out that I have the f/16 9-blade version. I also dug up an old e-mail from the ebay auction, and found that I paid $355 for it when I got it. I knew that $460 seemed a little pricey to me...
Hope your lens gets there safe and soon!
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there was no tomorrows
we'd packed away our sorrows
and we saved them for a rainy day
I wouldn't use $20 one either, but the Nikon one is quite good filter I think.
You paid a very good price for your AIS, but I still think $460 is still a good price, considering the rarity of the lens especially in mint condition.
By the way, do you happen to have the link to that comparison (filter/no filter) images? I'm curious to see how much degradation it makes.
I just wish Nikon would have produced an f90x with built-in exposure bracketing and maybe a built-in flash, but alas, they've stopped producing film SLR's altogether.
Just wondering, how many of you here use lenspen? I got a new lenspen (thought my older one wasn't doing the job properly), but everytime I clean my lens with it, it always leave a cleaning mark (not oil) around the lens. It's as if I can see a bit of the circular motion of how I clean the lens from the mark. It's not really a mark actually, but it's there and I can see it if I look very closely.
Do you have the same problem or maybe it's the lenspen? Or am I being too anal?
the solutions in the pen are essentially isopropyl alcohol. The cleaning marks depend on the % mixed content. Usually there'd be more marks left with more water in it. Get some microfibre cloth (thicker ones that'd absorb water, not those eyeglasses cleaning cloth) and rub it until the mark goes away.
I wouldn't dare using microfibre cloth for lens. I have thick ones, but for some reason I never trust microfibre cloth, maybe because I bought them from supermarket, lol.
One thing I hate about Australia is they don't have that many range of products when it comes to photograhy (and audio), my choice is pretty much very limited here, and most stores sell almost the same products.
My lenspen's brand is INCA (bet you've never heard it too), it's AUS$20 for mini one, for 20 bucks I expect something that at least don't look and feel as if I bought it from a $1 market. The retractable brush is so dodgily made, it's so hard to pull in and out cause it just doesn't align properly inside the slot. I hope the lenspen is actually REAL lenspen.
I bought my microfibre cloth from dollar store they work very well and definitely scratch free (tried it on some acrylic product, including cd)
I prefer microfibre to eyeglass cloth. I've found that those eyeglass cloth only make things worse as they are thin and don't really absorb any sort of liquid.
Don't be afraid of using general consumer stuff on your lenses, or lcd screen as a matter of fact. Most of the time the pro stuff are just rebranded consumer stuff. For example, I've got no idea wth is in those monster screen cleaning solution that makes them so darn expensive, but if you look at some lcd screen/lens cleaning solution that cost $10 a bottle having same ingredients as those $0.50 rubbing alcohol (isopropyl) in pharmacy. BIG rip off! I wouldn't be worried of using microfibre cloth to clean the lens, if you are skeptical, get 3m's cloth for like 5 bucks...probably 8AUD
After using one in the store last week, I have some serious D200 envy! I actually went to check out the Pentax K10D, which was a very nice package. Just to see what else you could get in that price range, I gave the D80 a shot. All-in-all it felt better physically and I felt I had better control of the important parameters (e.g. no needing to use the menu to adjust ISO in manual mode ). Of course the D200 was sitting right next to it, so what the heck, eh?
I was amazed by how good the D200 felt to hold and operate, so much more solidly constructed than either of the previous two. And it goes without saying that the degree of control possible is nothing short of astounding. I know it would take me quite some time to appreciate all that it can do, but even in my current state I was quite impressed.
Of course going straight from a manual-enabled P&S to a D200 seems a bit crazy, as would dumping an extra $400 on a camera body that will likely be worth next to nothing in a few years (at least at the pace digital cameras are currently advancing). But I'll be damned if I didn't love operating that camera! The craftsmanship and thoughtfulness of the whole package was ever so enticing! And then comes the lens buying fury, aaaarrrrgh!
). Of course the D200 was sitting right next to it, so what the heck, eh? 
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