Dont believe all the mega pixel hype. My camera only has 4 mega-pixel, but they are 4 very, very good mega-pixels and beats my 6 mega-pixel camera hands down. I havent looked at the Sony, but for the money Id go for the DSLR. I think the Rebel actually includes a lens for $1000. Then, after awhile, you decide you need a longer, shorter, better, lens, you can go out and get one. With the Sony, and others of the new 8 mega-pixel crop, you are stuck with the lens you have. Just my two cents worth. And I don't even shoot Cannon.

Now we are talking my type of photography. This is how I spend most of my time behind the camera. And if I had a nickel for each time someone asked me if I was the bands photographer, Id be a rich man.

I shoot with a flash, if Im allowed, can get close enough, and Im not annoying the band. I almost always shoot close-ups, to keep my meter from taking in to much background. I keep a finger on the exposure compensation control, and Im quick to dial down. But most of all I keep and eye out for facial expressions, and The Moment shots. In the end, Concert photos are a serious challenge if you are not the bands official photographer.

Others may have a better idea, but its been my experience that digital cameras have exposure latitude that is more similar to slide film, than to color negative film. That is to say, it is very narrow. I currently use 5 digi cams (Cannon G2, Minolta D7, Olympus C740, Nikon D-100, and Nikon D2H) and to varying degrees, have had this problem with all of them. If you are shooting a scene that has a range of tones from deep shadows to bright highlights, detail will have to be sacrificed someplace, and most cameras will expose for detail in the mid-tones, thus losing detail in both highlights and shadows. Now having rambled on about all that, what I do depends on the subject. When I shoot action, most of my work, I will try to avoid recording large blown out areas by underexposing by -0.3 to -1.7 EV. Doing this I realize I am sacrificing detail in the shadow, but this is less objectionable, in my opinion, than having huge blown out highlights. The other thing I do, is with stationary scenes I will ether bracket, with large changes in EV from + to -, or tripod shoot two exposures, one for highlight detail and one for shadow detail, and then combine the two images in post processing. This is simply what I do; others may have better ideas, and if they do, I to would be interested. In any event I dont think the addition of a UV will have any effect at all, and may increase the chance of lens flair, thus increasing the problem.

Please let us know how this printer works out. I spent a week trying to figure out the double profile problem with my 2200, and about ready to give it up for lost.
I dont know if anyone has experienced this problem with the 2200, but all my prints come out with a magenta cast. This points to the color profile being added in Photoshop, and in the print driver, even though I have No color correction in ICM on the print driver

Thanks for the laugh

I wish I could say I took these with a N-90 or D-100, but I didnt. The camera deserves a lot of the credit. As far as panning and hand held, yes to both. What I do is put my forearm across a fence or something, and rest the lens in the crook of the back of my forearm and hand. It keeps me from grabbing the lens, and gives me a fairly steady pivot point. Yes to auto focus as well. The D2H has 11 auto focus sensors in the frame, and they use some kind of predictive focus, that I havent quite figured out yet. The look on the two guys faces beside me shooting Big Glass was priceless when I let go at 8 frames per second. As far as seeing the Cheetahs up and around, this is a first in 10 years for me. I happened to walk in from shooting Cherry Blossoms at around 9:00 am, and they were setting up to exercise the cats. They have a rag on a motor driven wire that runs around the enclosure at 25+ mph. I still had a hard time catching this girl given all that.

Thanks for the welcome back!!

I just did a little math for a test, actually I let PS do the math for me, but as long as the file type is TIFF or another Lossless format, a 17mb image should produce a printable 8X10. If they are outputting to a JPG, I would have to pass. Reprocessing a JPG is almost never a good plan. The actual numbers for a full frame scan, TIFF with no compression, of a 35mm negative at 16.8mb yields a 2984px by 1964px image, that yields an image of 11.5in by 7.6in image at 260ppi. I repeated the test with a deferent image to see if the math lined up, and though not exact it was close. Of course the quality is going to depend on the scanner and the person and or program doing the scanning. But it may be worth a shot if you dont own a film scanner. If you do have a scanner, doing the scanning yourself, would be a much better approach.

First welcome to the forum, hope to see more of your work.

Ok, just my two cents worth. The first image is good, but the second is much, much better. Its been my opinion that portraits of men, when the intent is to show emotion, are all about texture. And the second brings this out. Also you are following the rule of thirds in the second. In that your eyes are the focus of the image and your eyes are in the upper left third of the image.

The color version would have worked better with a shallower depth of field, to blur the background, and toned down to decrees the highlights, also help to draw attention away from the background. This could have been accomplished with a larger aperture and a slower shutter speed, but at the same time you would have risked completely losing your eyes in shadow. But considering that you were holding the camera, this is good.

In the edited version, if I were to go any further, I would adjust the contrast up just a little to increase the texture, but keep a close eye on your eyes, because they are just about right. And there seems to be a bright speck just above your upper lip. Hit that one time with a clone stamp, put it in a frame, and hang it on your wall.

Good work, personally I like the third. I spent a many a spring afternoon trying to shoot storm skys, when I was a kid. After all, by the time the sky looked like this, the electricity was off, so I didnt have anything better to do. 20 years in Oklahoma and never used the storm cellar.

@ Jordy, my girlfriends sister is paying money to go chase storms in Oklahoma and Kansas in about 2 weeks, shes from Boston and I dont think she knows what she is in for. I was watching the news this A.M., and one of the storys was about a storm hitting More OK. This is part of the same area that was hit a few years ago, when a F-5 tore a 30mile by mile track through OK.

Man I think you are done. Ive worked up a few of these, and it is too easy to go overboard with the correction. The only glitch I notice is the hair above the left hand eye. But considering the shape of the original, I defiantly think that you are there. Great job, job, by the way.

Good shots, I've seen these guy's. Now look what I'v started :-}

Thanks folks. Michelle, as for the reason for the columns. The short answer is, well.just because. Personally I think the reason is has to do with the fact that around hear if you have a large open grassy area, someone has to put something on it. Such as a shopping mall, town house, or monument.

The truth of the matter goes like this. (Hope I get this right, the web site seems to be down at the moment.) These columns were part of the US Capital Building from around 1826 to 1956. About that time they put a new dome on the Capital, and the design gave the illusion that the dome was to big to be adequately supported. So to fix the illusion, they had to remove these columns, from the east side, to build whatever they built, so the dome wouldnt look as if it were going to fall. So now we jump to the 80s, some big shot landscaper took a trip out to the National Arboretum and seen this 20 acre stretch of grass and thought it needed something on it, and thought that the unused columns would go well at the top of the hill. He died a few months later, and they put the columns up.

So thats the story, as best as I can remember, but this is the URL to the page talking about the Capitol Columns http://www.usna.usda.gov/Gardens/collections/columns.html I suppose they will have it back up eventually.

Quinn