G'day from Queensland Australia

[Tony Meredith]

G'day everyone,

New to this forum. Currently i have an Alpha100 with Tamron 18-250 + Tamron 90 macro and recently acquired Tamron 17-50 f2.8. (and the kit lens that came with the camera). I've been interested in photography for about 5 years now, and i was lucky enough to win the alpha100 in a photo contest a couple of years ago. That's how i came to be an enthusiastic Sony system user. previously i had a Nikon Coolpix995 (the one that twists in half at the middle).

Looking forward to reading through the posts on this forum and picking up what i can along the way.

Cheers
Tony

[Tony Meredith]

Yep sure. This is the photo. I consider myself very lucky with this one. All of the other placegetters were pros.

[Dr. Harout]

Well, it's a nice shot and congratulations.
Keep up the efforts and welcome.

[David Kilpatrick]

It's more than a nice shot. It obeys the first rule of competition entry - make the picture tell a story. This is also a good rule for editorial pix, newspaper and PR pix, stock photos. Too many shots are just 'the subject' and unless they stunningly perfect or beautiful, that's not enough. Within your image there is a relationship, an imaginary line drawn between the eye and the insect, which the viewer will repeatedly follow (unconsciously). It's this which keeps attention and makes you study the shot. The difference in scale and the contrast in colours and focus all work well too.

David

[palin]

another g'day from sunny Queensland - i have just joined up. hope you don't mind me jumping on your welcome bandwagon Tony, but I'm not one to add unnecessary clutter to forums if i can avoid it, so decided to intro myself in your thread.

i've been interested in photography ever since i was a littlun, but never really explored it much until about 12 years ago when i bought a second hand Pentax K1000 and started taking gig photos. friends gave me hints and tips here and there, particularly push processing, and i really enjoyed learning. eventually i gave up for a while due to needing the money for rent and other things, but started getting back in to things in 2005 when my girlfriend and i went on the lookout for a dSLR. we ended up choosing the KM5D over the 350D from Canon due to the ergonomics and AS, and haven't looked back. the 5D is still going strong, though has been in for repair with a FBF issue that eventually deteriorated in to an explosion (the camera literally exploded in my hands as i was taking a shot - flames and smoke came out of it!). we've since added an a700 from the BestBuy sellout, thanks to one of the kind folks on the Sony dpreview forum.

we've just returned from a holiday in Japan, complete with about 35gig of photo data, and a few new lenses to boot. i'll be sure to post some of the results we got from our travels.

and just a final note to say thanks to you David. we've been using your website and other forum posts as a bit of a bible for our gear, and will no doubt continue to do so. so thanks again.

[Javelin]

Welcome and I for one look forward to you gallery of your Japan trip. the flaming 5D sounds interesting what do you think caused that ?

[KevinBarrett]

Howdy Tony Meredith! This is an older post, I see, but I never greeted you just the same (you actually joined just seven and a half hours after I did). I see you have the Tamron 17-50 I love so much. I am thinking of getting the 90mm macro, so I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it.

And welcome, to you, too, Palin! That's a very interesting story about your D5D, like Javelin I'd love to understand just what the heck happened!

[Dr. Harout]

And a welcome from me too Palin. Eager to see your shots of Japan.

[palin]

i'd love to give more (technical) detail, but the repair form would be buried somewhere among the mounds of paper in or around my filing cabinet.

we'd been having the FBF issue for some time, possibly around 9 months in to owning the camera. we were due to holiday in the UK, and didn't believe we had time for it to be repaired and come back, so decided to put up with it as it was. we'd just simply switch the camera off and then back on, and it would be happy again until the next period of prolonged non-activity - say an hour or so of being switched off. as the holiday went on, and after returning, the camera got worse and worse, sometimes taking up to 3 off/on cycles to get it to start working. we were preparing to organise the warranty repair when i needed to take a quick snap of a fridge we were selling one night. grabbed the 5D and took the first shot, expecting the fbf, then went through the off/on. as i took the next shot, there was a very loud bang, and a flame/flash shot out from between the body mount and the lens, and puffs of smoke escaped out the same area. scared the life out of me, and i'm not sure how i didn't drop the camera.

anyway, off it went for warranty service, and was back about 3 weeks later. pretty sure most the internals were replaced, though don't think they replaced the sensor from memory. it hasn't really missed a beat in the two years since, though it did lock up on us in Japan. i suspect that might just have been a lens that wasn't fully clicked in to place though.

as for what i think caused it - absolutely no idea. Brisbane can be quite humid in Spring and Summer, so there's a possibility that the moisture in the air could have caused a short. or the underlying issue that causes the FBF in the 5D might have caused it. or it might be a completely unrelated separate fault that just happened to make itself known. if i ever find the repair form, i'll be sure to post up what they replaced. in the meantime, i'm thankful for having purchased extended warranty, so i know it's covered for the next 2 years still!

i've collated all the japan shots in to the one place now - 34GB! the results are looking promising for the most part, and we shot cRAW+JPEG, so a lot of the JPEGs that haven't metered correctly or need a bit of work can easily be salvaged from RAW. the ones that can't be salvaged will be put down to experience and a lesson for the future.

[Tony Meredith]

G'day Palin. Interesting to read about your 5D. At least it's working now for you.

G'day Kevin also. I wish i had heaps to tell you about the 90mm macro but the truth is i haven't used it that much. I"ve done more portrait work with it than macro work. I like the colour and the sharpness, but i don't like the auto focus much with it on the A100. It seems to hunt excessively on most subjects, even well lit subjects with plenty of contrasty detail. i tend to use it in manual focus mode exclusively now. I have access to an A350 body now which i can use at any time, but i haven't tried the macro lens on it. The auto focus of my 18-250 is way better on the 350 than my 100 though, so i would hazard a guess that the same would go for the macro lens.