Hehe, well, maybe it's not so special to have such details in eye reflections then. Nice shots though guys. Especially that portrait of your dog Sam - it's lovely. And I'm not a pet person either!

(Are you sure the white balance is correct, though? Looks a bit orangey).

Unfortunately the next purchase for me isn't going to improve my image quality particularly, but I want a vertical grip. Mainly for the reasons of improved portrait controls, better stability, and the extra bulk gives me more of a "pro" look.

The latter of which sounds silly but is handy for getting extra attention & photo opps when I do stuff for my local gym. Which just happens to be full of rediculously fit blondes. Oh well.

Really need a high quality general zoom though. What I really want is my crappy kit lens 18-70 to be made as a constant but sharp f/2.8, even though it would probably cost the best part of a grand.

Quote from Jakg :

I CANNOT find an ingame screenshot (i.e. one with the HUD) - All I get are ones that look edited or from a movie sequence.

GTA doesn't use pre-rendered movie scenes. Any animated cut scenes are generated in real-time by the game engine, and look the same as the gameplay itself. The same goes for all the trailers for GTA4. They're rendered in real-time, so although they're well edited and nicely scored, they represent the game itself.

http://www.gta4.net/trailers/

Quote from SamH :

Awesome photos! That's a really fantastic lens by the looks of those results!

Cheers! Yes it is a fantastic lens, especially for the money. My Sigma 70-300 is another star performer. It's APS-C only, and is a bit soft at the long end, but apart from that it provides really quite incredible image quality considering the low cost of it.

It doesn't match the Tamron 90 for detail or sharpness though. You remember the scene in Bladerunner where Deckard recrates an entire image from a tiny reflection in a picture? Maybe that's not so farfetched. I'll not post the entire image as I'd rather not splash his identity across the internet, so below is a 100% crop from the centre of the frame of a photo of my gorgeous 2 year old nephew, but I never expected the Tamron 90 (this time with A700) to capture such room detail in the reflection!



And that was shot wide open, too (1/125s, ISO200, bounced flash). I've definitely never taken a photo before where you can see my reflection, the light fitting, the picture on the wall, the doorway etc in the reflection of someone'e eye.

Quote from Jakg :

as it still doesn't look much more advanced than GTA SA.

Wow - that's hilariously incorrect on such a massive scale that it's almost sig-worthy.

Quote from SamH :

I wouldn't mind seeing some photos pulled out of that setup, when you're ready!

Here ya go (albeit all with the A100, not the A700):

#1 Thermalright HR-03-GT...



Something a bit more natural...

#2


#3


#4


#5


#6


#7


#8




And continuing the plant theme, taken with my 24mm:
#9

Last edited by STROBE, Sat, 17 May 2008 18:42.

Quote from Shotglass :

tape a few pages of black paper to a ring and fax that back to their number

That's an infamous and excellent way of getting revenge over the phone lines, but sadly most fax machines these days seem to scan all the pages before they'll dial and send, preventing you from taping one end to the other and creating an endless loop.

Cards I use:

3× Sandisk 2GB Extreme III
1× Bytestor 2GB (it's shit)
1× Kingston 1GB 50x
3× Transcend 2GB 266x

The Transcends are by far the best. They're the only UDMA compatible cards I have, so now with my new A700 they'll be the cards I use the most.

15GB of CF storage here.

Well Sam, at least you know your camera/lens isn't mucking up. I was aware that the effective aperture of macro lenses drops as you approach 1:1 but had no idea it was by that much. I'm curious whether the same thing applies to my Tammy. It's f/2.8 at infinity, but I've read that it drops to ~f/6-7 at 1:1. Not that it matters of course as you need to stop down to get enough D0F for close-up work anyway - the Tammy seems surprisingly resilient to diffraction even down to f/16 and beyond.

That surely can't be right. It means your 55mm lens has an aperture of only 0.9mm?

"f*ck off" usually does the trick.

lmao, you bastard. I've never clicked on a thread so quickly.

Quote from flymike91 :

OPEC can decide whatever price they want for gas. It is my considered opinion that they are "punishing" the world for the current state of affairs in the middle east much like during the 1973 oil embargo. Tomorrow OPEC could say that gas costs $500 a barrel and we would have to pay it.

It's called capitalism.

Nikon mount? Hell no! Sony took over the Minolta A-mount when KonicaMinolta bailed out of the camera business.

I've already used the Tamron 90 macro (which is available in all the lens mounts) with my old A100. Shot a couple of gigabytes of pictures at a fashion show a couple of weeks ago, which has led to my very first image sales to some rather gorgeous blondes.

And this weekend, before I got the new A700, I used the Tammy & A100 to shoot this little beauty...



Aint she a stunner?

Everyone seems really appalled when I tell them that spider was actually dead. I accidentally froze it to death by leaving it in the freezer too long. I only wanted to slow it down a bit...

Congrats Sam - if you have old lenses that you really like then getting a camera body that lets you get the most out of them makes sense.

I got a new toy today, too.

(I mean the body, not the lens).

Quote from garph :

It's all about profits

Yes and no.

Yes, the oil companies are profiteering from it and making some tidy amounts of money.

No, that's not the fundamental reason behind the increasing cost. It's supply and demand. Demand is through the roof, and is outstripping supply. OPEC, which produces the majority of th world's oil, isn't increasing output because 1) they can't, their infrastructure is at capacity, and 2) they enjoy the increased prices too. So they can either spend money on expanding their infrastructure and make less money as a result, or they can spend no money and make more money. Difficult decision.

Quote from garph :

the government will have to do something

Like what? Nuke China back to the stone age? Turn wine into oil?

Last edited by STROBE, Wed, 14 May 2008 10:34.

Filled mine up last week for £46, the highest it's ever been. Fortunately a tank of fuel lasts me three or four weeks as I only have a ten minute commute.

Nonetheless I can see how badly it affects those who have a long commute, and it's not going to get any better. What's going to happen is that as fuel costs escalate, it will gradually begin to affect our lifestyles.

We'll start living closer to where we work, and travelling less in general. Food produce should start to be produced locally for the supermarkets as the French do, rather than trucking it all to a central distribution centre, then trucking it back out again all over the country.

I once read that since the fifties, we've been having one big oil party - cheap, convenient energy that we're getting drunk on with large cars, driving longer distances, flying abroad for holidays, filling our homes with cheap consumer goods that consume cheap energy, building things from cheap plastics and transporting things from China where the labour is cheap and the shipping fuel oil is cheap... etc etc.

And it's all going to start to change, and it'll be like we're suffering the hangover the morning after. Not because the oil is running out (yet) but because the demand has shot up so much from places like India and China.

Nonetheless, 1 in 8 barrels of oil produced globally ends up in the fuel tank of an American motorist. Time to ditch the V8s, guys.

Couple of photos from last week:

(EDIT) on second thoughts, not entirely sure I have the models' permission to be posting these.

Last edited by STROBE, Tue, 6 May 2008 18:35. Reason : removed fashion show pictures

May I ask how much you're considering paying for the D1x? Just that unless you really need "pro-grade" features (i.e. good seals, integrated grip, etc) you may be better off getting a more recent, but "low" or "mid grade" Nikon body. The D1x is getting pretty old now. That doesn't make it any worse, but there might be a more recent mid-range body that provides better image quality for the same money.

Brilliant idea - I've recently wished there were something like this when pondering whether I can get to any circuits with my camera.

Bug report: selecting any race types in County Durham returns a result for Silverstone.

Quote from zeugnimod :

I don't believe you.

Maybe he already has a million dollars. Although that's only worth about £4.38 these days.

My five? Hmmm.

1. I'm hungry.
2. I'm 5'11"
3. My flat is a tip right now and I need to get it tidied this afternoon
4. I'm allergic to fish
5. I have a terrible, crippling weakness for blondes.

Is that in depth and meaningful enough?

Quote from Electrik Kar :

but you guys have taken over WHOLE COUNTRIES!

And while we were at it, we gave them the concepts of currency, a justice system, railways, machinery, sewerage, steam power... to be quite frank, the list is huge.

True, we also screwed up some countries, and created some more (*cough*Iraq*cough) that have been a little bothersome since.

You win some, you lose some. But the British Empire brought plenty good to the world, as well as some bad things.

Quote from TiJay :

So what I'm asking is if anyone has opinions

Like you, I've run a 1.25 Zetec-engined Fiesta (mine being of a 1996 vintage), and they're great cars.

The Puma is also a great car. It's also very much a girl's car. I honestly can't ever remember seeing a guy driving one.

Because if I were to spend any amount needed to acquire a console instead of putting it towards a new camera lens or a new car, I expect to be able to watch BD movies on it too.

This thread needs locking.


Because it, and many others across the internet, are making me want to buy a PS3 which I cannot afford and have no other use for. Grrr. :mad:

Steam started out as a good idea.

But when you can order games from play.com and hmv.com for less than they cost on Steam, and physically buying the game involves manufacturing, shipping, then shipping again to deliver it to you, and a cut for everyone involved in this process, then you know someone at Valve is getting mighty greedy.