Back into the hobby

[gigabyte]

Hey folks,

I am finally back into real photography after many years of being a lazy point & shoot guy. Not that I was ever very good, but I did enjoy my old Pentax SLR's, and I generally got fairly good results. I picked up a mid range Nikon D5100 with the stock 18-55mm lens and I am really pleased with the initial shots I have taken, this seems to be just the ticket for me. I am now wondering what I should be looking at for an additional lens, any suggestions?

Just to give some idea of my interests I mainly shoot scenery, although I am heading to a regional airshow in late Aug and I want to have a good lens for that. My old setup was a Pentax K1000 with a 55mm and a 70-210mm zoom, that seemed to suite my needs nicely, looking at the Nikor lens now they have a 55-200 and a 55-300, the price is almost double so I am wondering if the extra range is worth twice the price?

[Panther_99FS]

Hey folks,

I am finally back into real photography after many years of being a lazy point & shoot guy. Not that I was ever very good, but I did enjoy my old Pentax SLR's, and I generally got fairly good results. I picked up a mid range Nikon D5100 with the stock 18-55mm lens and I am really pleased with the initial shots I have taken, this seems to be just the ticket for me. I am now wondering what I should be looking at for an additional lens, any suggestions?

Just to give some idea of my interests I mainly shoot scenery, although I am heading to a regional airshow in late Aug and I want to have a good lens for that. My old setup was a Pentax K1000 with a 55mm and a 70-210mm zoom, that seemed to suite my needs nicely, looking at the Nikor lens now they have a 55-200 and a 55-300, the price is almost double so I am wondering if the extra range is worth twice the price?

I have the D5100 and personally, I like the extra reach of a 300 over a 200. You can get a refurbished 55-300 for $299 at Adorama. I've purchased a couple of refurbished lenses from Adorama - absolutely no problems with them at all....:mixedsmi:

[gigabyte]

I have the D5100 and personally, I like the extra reach of a 300 over a 200. You can get a refurbished 55-300 for $299 at Adorama. I've purchased a couple of refurbished lenses from Adorama - absolutely no problems with them at all....:mixedsmi:

Thanks P. I was leaning towards the 200 mainly because of the price, but I will be checking out Adorama for sure. I personally have never had a problem with any refurb product I have ever purchased so that does not concern me in the least, as a matter of fact I would generally pick refurb over new for darn near anything given the choice.

[kilo delta]

If you can stretch a little I'd recommend the 70-300mm VR. It's a fantastic lens for airshow photography..in fact,in good light, I tend to prefer it over my Nikon 80-200mm f2.8.

[Cazzie]

Well, my Pentax K-x gave up the ghost last Monday. I am sending it to the Pentax repair center in AZ, hope it doesn't cost too much to repair. But for me, being without a camera is living my life as a blank slate; cameras and cats have been my patron saints since I was six years old! So, I went to Sam's Club and got the Nikon D5100 with the extra 55-200-mm lens. However, I do agree with Panther, the 55-300-mm is a better option and I shall be ordering one of those (thanks for the link P.).

One thing I will give Nikon, their photos at higher ISOs in the order or 800 and 1600 are above and beyond better than any other camera I have ever owned. The noise is so little, I never have to use the Neat Image plug-in in Photoshop to help clear digital noise. I am going to have to get use to all the complicated functions the camera has, I have been shooting Pentax cameras since 1970 and have always enjoyed their ruggedness and ease of use. The K-x was almost hands-on easy, as I also have a Pentax istDL (now in possession of my brother, who enjoys it far too much for me to take it back). And besides, he bought me my first Pentax 35-mm when he was stationed in Korea, only fair I leave the camera in his possession.

Con to the D5100, no real dedicated layered HDR function. Sure, it has an in-camera HDR mode and it does a good job, excellent for HDR novices. But I like to manipulate my own HDR shots. It would be very nice if Nikon could come up with some firmware for the D5100 to allow for real dedicated multi-image HDR photos.

But for those of us who cannot afford the D7000, the D5100 is one great camera, I have been knocked out by the quality of the test images I have been shooting, as mentioned, especially those using high ISO settings.

Caz

[gigabyte]

...

Con to the D5100, no real dedicated layered HDR function. Sure, it has an in-camera HDR mode and it does a good job, excellent for HDR novices. But I like to manipulate my own HDR shots. It would be very nice if Nikon could come up with some firmware for the D5100 to allow for real dedicated multi-image HDR photos.

Caz

OK maybe I am off bit on this one, but I found the Auto Bracketing feature in the menu on the D5100 and it sure seems like dedicated HDR layering, one of the reviews I read mentioned Bracketing in relation to HDR and I have tried the basic feature on the camera it's OK but it only works on compressed images so no RAW HRD. I tried a couple of shots with the AutoBracketing in RAW and they look good but I have not tried merging the images yet, that is something I plan to do this week. I'll let you know if it looks like true layering or if I am just having another brain fart...

[Cazzie]

OK maybe I am off bit on this one, but I found the Auto Bracketing feature in the menu on the D5100 and it sure seems like dedicated HDR layering, one of the reviews I read mentioned Bracketing in relation to HDR and I have tried the basic feature on the camera it's OK but it only works on compressed images so no RAW HRD. I tried a couple of shots with the AutoBracketing in RAW and they look good but I have not tried merging the images yet, that is something I plan to do this week. I'll let you know if it looks like true layering or if I am just having another brain fart...

That is exactly how I do it, but you are limited to only three bracketed shots. To do this, one must set the right side of the info screen to bracketing and the bracketing to 2.0 AE, then set the shot to Continuous. And yes, it does give one a three-shot multilevel HDR set with one at -2 Ev, one at 0 Ev, and one at + 2 Ev. But there should be a firmware developed that would allow that to be done in one setting such as I have with the K-x, which also allows me to shoot HDR in RAW. I'll test again to see if it can be done in RAW. You say it can, I hope so, because I like the full depth of RAW images for HDR processing. I do know the in-camera HDR only allows JPEG images.

Caz

[Cazzie]

Joy, joy! Gigabyte, yes indeed, the bracketed shots can be done in RAW! Hooray! I still have a lot to learn about this camera. Going to the ball game now, so it would take too long to process the RAW image in Photomatix Pro at the moment. Thanks heaps.

Caz

[gigabyte]

Joy, joy! Gigabyte, yes indeed, the bracketed shots can be done in RAW! Hooray! I still have a lot to learn about this camera. Going to the ball game now, so it would take too long to process the RAW image in Photomatix Pro at the moment. Thanks heaps.

Caz

Glad I could point out something useful, I think it will do a bit more than just the 3 images, I saw a couple of other settings there as well, one was at looked to me like 7 images, but I have not had time to play with that yet. I am going to try and mess with all the options next week when I am on vacation and see what is thing can really do.

My next question(s) will be about post processing and I see you already mention Photomatrix, I have Photoshop CS now but I have not been real happy with what I am getting from that so I am looking for suggestions on photo software next.

BTW has anyone here ever tried Digicam? It's an open source library app that I found, it looks great so far but I have not g into it too deep yet. My first big job now will be to catalogue my images, I have close to 75K on my home server and there is a lot of work to do organizing the mess I have - about 30k tagged and the rest are totally n catalogued except for some folder organisation but that is all so far.

[Cazzie]

Glad I could point out something useful, I think it will do a bit more than just the 3 images, I saw a couple of other settings there as well, one was at looked to me like 7 images, but I have not had time to play with that yet. I am going to try and mess with all the options next week when I am on vacation and see what is thing can really do.

My next question(s) will be about post processing and I see you already mention Photomatrix, I have Photoshop CS now but I have not been real happy with what I am getting from that so I am looking for suggestions on photo software next.

BTW has anyone here ever tried Digicam? It's an open source library app that I found, it looks great so far but I have not g into it too deep yet. My first big job now will be to catalogue my images, I have close to 75K on my home server and there is a lot of work to do organizing the mess I have - about 30k tagged and the rest are totally n catalogued except for some folder organisation but that is all so far.

Photoshop from CS5 on has always had a minimal HDR function. In addition to Photomatix Pro, I can highly mention the less expensive SCI Fhotoroom HDR: http://www.fhotoroom.com/. These are dedicated HDR editors that will handle RAW images also. They will layer and stitch the multiple images. Unless one is shooting in a very low-light situation, I have found three shots at -2 Ev, 0 Ev, and +2 Ev will give one a tonal range running from -5 to +5. That's plenty to work with and less for the editor to have to align and stitch, ergo a better aligned image. If you find some way to go with more, however, I am all ears.

When you order Fhotoroom, you get a web upload service that allows full sized images. I have used Photobucket for years here stateside.

Caz

[Panther_99FS]

Glad to see you 2 are enjoying your D5100s

[jmig]

You guys might want to check out Oloneo PhotoEngine for HDR. It is simple and easy to use.