Yeah, it seems to be. It must be the way the camera calculates it, or the effect of going macro. At infinity, the camera reports the lens as at f/32, which the lens is rated at. As I focus closer, it moves to f/40, f/45, f/51 and then at almost minimum focus distance (from about 3 down to about 1 inch from the subject) it gets to f/57.

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

The aperture is definitely physically more than that. With an 8 second exposure with no ND filters, in direct sunlight, it would be about right though.

With the lens being a macro lens, perhaps the element design is such that, at minimum focus, the aperture blades are not exactly at the point of convergence. The result would be a narrower effective f/stop, even with a wider physical aperture.

[edit] hmm.. that could potentially lead to vignetting.. hmm.. but I'm using a digital, which has a smaller CCD than 135 film.. so vignetting wouldn't be so obvious.. but I never noticed vignetting on film either.. hmm.. I dunno.

I know with my canon 100mm 2.8 macro at minimum focusing distance it actualy has a focal length of 65mm. So maybe something is going on. I don't think that changes the f stop though.

Quote from http://www.estiasis.com/totalid/device/lens/88/ :

Macro lenses focus close enough that the effective aperture changes as you get closer. The TTL meter for available light and flash exposure compensates for this. The F100, unless you change this in a custom function, will read and set the true effective f/stop regardless of distance. That means that at infinity the f/stop range is from f/2.8 through f/32, but at 1:1 the effective range is f/5 through f/57.

Seems it's not a camera fault at least. Phew

Yesterday i bought myself a Fuji(film) FinePix S1000FD, i'm pleased with it as i am not a serious photographer and just an normal pic taker

That's a pretty impressive zoom on such a small camera! I also have the Fuji S5600 and I've been very pleased with that.. it's a very capable little camera indeed. Your new camera is even more so!

You've got to think first i had a HP Photosmart M425, 5MP, out of warranty and wouldn't read SD cards its a POS!

Now i have 2 2Gb SD Cars and 1 Gb 150x SD Card, so over 2000 Pics i can take .

Grtz,
Kevin

hehe! I only have one 1GB CompactFlash card at the moment, but I can take quite a few 7MB photos on that. I probably won't run out of space for a while, being so close to my computer for most of the time!

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.

I got a 12gig CF card for 90 bucks after rebate. So far I haven't gotten anywhere near filling it up. My computer was out of comission on and off for the last month and a half and I still have plenty of space on this card, hehe.

Geez you guys.. I'm really only just coming out of film.. I tend not to shoot many photos yet. The "don't waste film" mentality is still fresh in my mind at the moment. I'm sure I will begin to adapt to digital, and I'll be needing more media as that happens

Right now, my battery doesn't hold a charge long enough for me to use up my CF memory. I need to buy some extras of those too. Looks like they're not too badly priced in the spurious market, and I've seen quite a few Nikonians recommend buying them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtQWwpOtuc
testmovie , car is lowered so that explains the shaky cam . It's a friends car

Question - What brand cards do you buy? I use a 2 GB Sandisk Ultra III in my camera because it's cheap and fast (which is the main reason why I bought it - my Dad gave me his camera as it was too sluggish - all down to 2+ MB images and a generic card, but I sold the camera in the end), but i'm curious as to what the pro's think.

Sandisk Ultra II 2 Gb SD cards, cheap and fast enough.

If I have the luxury of having a laptop near when shooting, I keep two cards in rotation: shoot a while, throw it into a card dear and while it's dumping its load into Lightroom I stick the other card in the camera and keep shooting crappy frames one after another.

I use Apacer cards
2 normal 2Gb card and 1 150x speed card of 1Gb

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.

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

I spotted a FO8 at Road America today! Oh, and it won by a substantial margin. Here's another thing to ponder: that car is considered vintage.

Quote from STROBE :

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

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

Quote from jayhawk :

I spotted a FO8 at Road America today! Oh, and it won by a substantial margin. Here's another thing to ponder: that car is considered vintage.

Nice shot! I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK a car has to have been built between 1919 and 1930 in order to be described as a "vintage" car. Earlier than that, it's described as a "veteran" car. Classic cars aren't so clearly defined here, though. The FO8 is certainly a classic!

Belgium
15 or 20 years is Classic Car
25 years is Oldtimer
and the rest

Quote from SamH :

Nice shot! I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK a car has to have been built between 1919 and 1930 in order to be described as a "vintage" car. Earlier than that, it's described as a "veteran" car. Classic cars aren't so clearly defined here, though. The FO8 is certainly a classic!

This race was put on by the SVRA, so it is partially their rules, and IIRC partially by what what IMSA dictates.

And man oh man, you should have seen it in action; it looked almost cartoonish going around corners, and the sound was like F1 lite.

Damn, I never knew that was even there! I went to Green Bay a few times for the railroad museum.. wish I'd known that was on the way at Elkhart Lake!

Looks like an awesome day out!

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 STROBE :

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!

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/7089/dsc00332th8.jpg" alt="" onload="imageAutoSize(this)" />

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.

Here's a similar picture of my 'baby'

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stregone/2442158312/