Club Arnage

.... will appear here!!!!  ;D

Too knacked to sort through the 4,000 when I got home this morning! (OK so 1,000 of those were from the Tour de France on Friday and Saturday but....)

Will post a few samplers this evening hopefully!

Was great to see all the CAers on MB .. top time!

Cheers

Rick

Here are a few of my snaps:-

These were taken on a Canon IXUS 4.0 mege pixel with the standard fixed lens. About to buy myself a real camera!!  ;D

Few More

Yes I blagged my way into the Porsche Curves Media area with Mr Rick for the final two sessions on Saturday. ;D

What a joy no fences!!

One for Rick himself!!

Stumpy didn't bring the Macca after all opting for his second car.

What would that be then Rick? ;)

Will be looking for some guidence from CA members after financial approval.

A dropped Ixus at the Classic via Travel Insurance. Should pay the deposit.

Looks like you were lucky enough to have dropped it at the close of play ;)  Very fortunate, what sort of budget do you have?

Fixed the camera temporarely at Arnage on the front passenger seat of Mr. Ricks bus.

I will be looking at around £800 for the complete Body and Lens. Would also like a couple of spare batteries and a couple of large memory cards aswell though.

Most probably looking at Canon or Nikon.

If the insurance do pay out I may have a couple of hundred extra to spend.

20D's going cheap as chips at the moment - when we last spoke you wanted a standard lens, with a view to upgrading to something better in the future.  You could easily achieve a 20D + Battery Grip, 2 X batteries, a 1 gig memory card etc for £800 second hand. 

If you want to go new, the 30D is very nice.

I've never used Nikon (you'll soon find out that you buy a system and once you're in, its expensive to swap!) however the results I see from them are not inconsiderable.  I've been through a stage where (with FS's guidance) I've realised that some of my photos have been looking great on my screen, but rubbish on other peoples - but having sorted that out, I'm now very pleased with my canons efforts, and I only have a 300D - if you dont need the extras of a 20d, I would suggest that a 300d picked up for £300 odd would be a good budget starting point for you as well.

If you want to play with my canon, please feel free to give me a buzz....I need some help from you shortly anyway :) 

Brad

P.S  Peter is a veritable fountain of photography knowledge as well - weigh up all the options before you take the plunge - we will have very differing views, but once you're into a system, you'll never escape!!!!

Brad, thank you for those kind words, I do what I can.  with regard to systems, I was always an Olympus OM system man, mainly for all the travel I use to do,  always wanted a Canon F1 so bought into that system in a big way and still have a number of bodies and lenses, mainly keepers, as they are quite rare.  Bought into the Nikon DSLR system because i wanted to go taking snaps underwater and at the time most systems supported the Nikon kit.

Brad is right, everyone will have a view about why their system is the best.  in the main it comes down to;  what you personally like, you may think Canon is the best and irrespective of the evidence will always pick Canon, also, how the system works for you, make sure that the image you've seen in your minds eye is the one that the camera has recorded, controls, how they are used and convenience, cost, especially as you want the system to do more, so in brads case, excellent lenses, can always move up the scale with the bodies and so on.  With a DSLR system most if not all will produce publishable A3 shots with care, DO NOT become a measureabator, think carefully about the Mega-pixel count, its not everything,  the quality of the chip, lens and electronics is far more important, I wouldn't use anything bigger than a 1-2 Gig CF card, depending on chip size, always shot RAW and get a good photo manipulation system like photoshop elements, maybe CS if you use a MAC.  Also you really do need to know your photography, crap in crap out has never been truer.

of course, you will need to make sure the system is color managed, from the monitor, scanner, printer, etc.  I always shot in RAW set everything to Adobe 1998 RGB and go from there.  the delights of color spaces and gamut's await.

Look at some of the web forums out there, plenty of advise.

I personally like my Nikon D70 and have been getting good results. Its easy to use and also lighter than the Canon. I have yet to figure out how to work a Canon when I have tried in the past. One thing I do like about the Nikon over the canon is that it has a removeable plastic LCD protector which is better to scratch and replace than scratching the screen itself.

Batterries can be picked up cheap off ebay. I bought a generic one for my Nikon for £7.50 with postage and it works just as well as my proper Nikon branded one which would cost £40 to buy from a shop.

I would at least get two 1 GB memory cards. I prefer this to one 2 GB card as if one fails you still have the other, where as if your 2 GB fails, you will have nothing.

Regards
Chris

I also love my D70.  One downside is that CompactFlash cards are pricey compared to other memory cards (Lexar are best - not my view, that of the photographic press).  I think that you are well advised to invest in an up-to-date photographic magazine as they bench test cameras and lenses and their views are less skewed by personal preferences!

CF cards pricey?  it depends, Lexar are good, so are Sandisc, when they first came out I paid nearly 400GBP for a 1GB, so 30GBP for a GB i reckon is good value.  Of course there are various grades and speeds, match the card speed to the camera and its buffer capacity.

Magazines and Websites have allegiances  to manufacturers if you want an unbiased view look at a fan site examples are, 
http://www.fredmiranda.com/
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/index.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/

hope this helps Peter

£30 for 1gb Sandisk? Amazon have them for £18.49! http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0007QU7KU/026-5741019-3146809?v=glance&n=560798&s=electronics&v=glance

you see this is what happens when the "technical" people get themselves involved ;)  Smokie, the big boys play with Cf cards, the advert is for a SD card. :o

Oh, OK. Sowwy...  :-\

This is the one:-

Compact Flash is not cheap but seems the most popular. Do both Canon and Nikon use Compact Flash?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0007QU6Y2/202-0104972-7499079?v=glance&n=560798&s=electronics&v=glance

iits a depends answer Rick, yes they do and no they don't, it depends on the Camera, not the manufacturer.  The DSLR's almost certainly all use CF, whereas the compact cameras and point and shoot use SD, in the main.  Lets hope you can use the full potential of an Extreme 111 card?

Guys,

It's not often I complain which I appreciate is a bit of an oddity for a female, but when I see a thread about photos I want to see photos and not read about what sodding camera / flash gun / memory cards you use.   >:(

Rant off

Yeah, but the quality of the pics you're going to see depends to some extent on the quality of the equipment!  Rename the thread?

Fair point Deb.   :)

Although I have to say that if someone were to give me a top of the range camera with all the bells and whistles I'd still end up with photos that consisted of either the front or rear half of a car.  Just rubbish at taking photos at the end of the day.   ::)

Here ya go then Doris  ;D

And referring back to techie posts, this was taken with a Canon EOS 20D with Canon 35-350 at full tilt down at the entrance to the Porsche curves (where Rick's piccies were taken too!).

Still sifting thru all the fotos so will post some more over the next few days.....

And just to keep you happy, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/97986095@N00/  More to come too, I hope - just have to sift through 1200 pics first!

I'm afraid cameras leave me cold too Doris. Obviously I like the results they get (for other people) but I couldn't care less about where the eff stop is located. Cameras are like computer hardware :(; they perform a useful job but they're just not exiting in the same way as cars, planes, boats, space rockets and other things with big noisy whizzy roundy bits and bobs.

See the red, yellow and green car in the background of Rick's shot? - That's what most of mine come out like - unless it's at Le Mans, where a large expanse of grey concrete, topped with razor-wire is usually the main subject matter.

Now there's an offer!!  ;)

A few images from the weekend

If there is anything specific your looking for contact me and I will see what I have

http://www.gtphotosport.com/lmclassic06/index.html

and some more

http://www.pbase.com/smarjoram/lmclassic2006

Right, that's the lot.  Will get around to captioning them in due course!

More pics - this time from Mr Termite - on this site.
Faster lens, better pictures... OK I'll shut up about this.