[Curious]

i picked 1 & 3 once i went digital. still have a heavy stiff tripod that i traded for many years ago. guy wanted light, i needed heavy for the 4 x 5. win/win.

got a monopod for christmas last year and it works great for use with a long lens. nice compromise for on the go shooting.

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Plus, I don’t actually have to watch the meteors, I can sit comfortably in the car with the remote shutter and just keep clicking 30 second exposures in any given direction…at 2 a minute, over an hour, one will surely fly by the open shutter…or I would hope.

hadn’t thought of that. will have to try my new wireless shutter release from inside the house.

The best time to watch for Gemind meteors will be at 6 a.m. EST (1100 GMT), when the shower is expected to be at its most active. that’s 5 here and about the time i’m getting up for work. perhaps if the release works i’ll just set the camera outside and snap a few while i get ready to leave.

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caradoc what he^ said. you do good work.

did they tell why they are dropping the show?

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i’m a few miles east of the mississippi and it’s going to be 19 tomorrow morning. think i’ll pass.

a few years back i tried watching this. wasn’t quite as cold that night but 120 per hour is 2 a minute and frankly i was both cold and underwhelmed. fun for 5-10 minutes, ok for 10-15 minutes back in the house by 20 minutes.

however for folks with more enthusiasm for astro stuff it’s definitely worth watching.

[Curious]

If you browse around, you’ll see various prices with various shipping amounts (including free) that almost always total out within a dollar or so of each other.

what i saw browsing around was a lot of the very same stuff offered by different places at the same price. the adapter folks also have the bellows sleeeping linked to earlier.

and i found this same bellows and focusing rail in two places. that side shift focusing rail is pretty neat. my minolta focusing rail is just front and back.

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Ah, yeah, you’re going to need a Non-G lens on the bellows to control the aperture, there’s no way to open and close it manually on a bellows. (the 50/1.8 is good and cheap though).

well crap, so much for that idea. i’ve probably looked at the lenses i have several dozen times and never thought about or noticed the lack of an aperture ring.

Come to think of it, you could also try one of these with some old MD glass: http://cgi.ebay.com/PIXCO-Macro-Minolta-MD-Lens-Nikon-AI-Mount-Adapter-/190477298030?pt=Lens_Accessories&hash=item2c5954e96e#ht_1770wt_1139

so it’s $125 for a nikon 50mm prime or $20 for an adapter for my 50mm MD mount prime. and in either case manual exposure and manual focus using the bellows. guess i need to drag the MD mount lens out and see what kind of shape it’s in.

thanks sleeping.

i really like doing macro and for semi q&d the extension tubes work fine but a bellows has so much more control. yeah i’m talking to myself here, you guys all know this.

[Curious]

(the 50/1.8 is good and cheap though).

amazon at $125.00 isn’t bad. but for something i’d seldom use …

orionid i’ll keep that in mind.

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Ah, yeah, you’re going to need a Non-G lens on the bellows to control the aperture, there’s no way to open and close it manually on a bellows. (the 50/1.8 is good and cheap though).

well crap, so much for that idea. i’ve probably looked at the lenses i have several dozen times and never thought about or noticed the lack of an aperture ring.

[Curious]

That bellows neither tilts nor shifts. The Bellows that do that for nikon (even the hong-kong ones) push upwards of $100.

As far as the F-mounts, for the most part, they’re all interchangeable, however some of the older bodies have a sort of low-hanging light meter that interferes with some of the newer deep-setting lenses. If that’s just the bayonet mount as it looks, it should fit anything with an f-mount.

knew it didn’t tilt of shift but was interested in the macro aspects of a bellows. my ext tubes are nice but limited to fixed sizes. and for those dollars in your links i’ll definitely pass on OEM.

thought i’d heard all F mounts were interchangeable but wanted confirmation, thanks.

sleeping thanks to you too for both the mount info and hong kong sellers.

a followup if you will. that hong kong nikon mount bellows at <$40 says "free shipping". in your experience is that true? i don't mind having to wait for it.

the one downside is that it doesn’t look like it auto couples the exposure meter. not having tried my camera on manual metering i don’t know how much of problem that might be. and the D3000 lacks a DOF preview button which would not help at all.

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sleeping your bellows link was for a canon but i found this page for nikon. for camera compatibility it had this info: Nikon cameras:
Nikon D80, D70, D70s, D60, D50, D40, D40x
Nikon D300, D200, D100
Nikon D3, D2Xs, D2Hs, D2X, D2H, D1X, D1H, D1

the D80 is a DX sensor camera. as is my D3000. so that’s ok but do all nikon mounts interchange? for instance my minolta MD lenses wouldn’t fit the 7D or any of the minolta AF film cameras. which was why i had to go the ext tube route rather than the bellow and focusing rail i have. as you can see i’m a nikon newbie and could look it up but .. well i’m lazy.

and have you done business with these folks? their approval rating is high but they are in hong kong which concerns me some.

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the office building was neat and the two different axis shots of the lagoon.

tilt shift certainly has it’s place but IMO that last shot isn’t it. the top being out of focus distracts rather than adds to the shot. YMMV

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orionid: Very interesting. I suspect you’re right. Jack and Suzy see a theme they’ve got the perfect picture for and enter it, then let their friends and family know about it, who then end up voting for others as well. They then disappear into the sunset until the next perfect theme comes along. Or as the data seems to indicate, most of them disappear forever. I’ve got 5596 unique entrants in my database and only 411 of those have entered more than 10 contests and 3211 (57%) have entered only one.

interesting supposition but it presupposes that Jack & Suzy’s assorted friends and family have fark accounts. in my personal experience my family (a sister) doesn’t. she merely looks because i send her a link. OTOH among my few RL and online friends 3 have fark accounts. and all enter at least occasionally. they lack my enthusiasm for entering regularly but match your “oh i have a picture for this” group.

basically i agree with you and orionid that some themes bring out more casual entries and therefore votes but wonder how many extra non participating voters that produces. in other words do Jack and Suzy’s family/friends really contribute significantly to the voting totals.

and since i don’t (usually) vote for mine what does a 4 vote total tell me about a particular entry 🙂

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neat. if i’m understanding this correctly the space between the camera mount and the lens board is going to be the same except for whatever tilting you are doing. in your forth picture that appears to be a minimum of 1/2 inch and a maximum of 1 inch. i’m thinking something like the last item on this page. we have a dust collector on our bench grinders at work that has short pieces of flex tubing as part of the adapter but i cant find them right now.

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Where’s Grinder Girl when I need her?

wouldn’t that be a screen shot?

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I haven’t written anything on this, I just posted that link…

so quit slacking off and get busy posting. we count on you for technical advice.

seriously, we do.

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