I recently did a wedding shoot, something I haven't done before, and used various sources for advice, inspiration etc. One of them is a website called www.photography-on-the.netforum/index.php which is great not only for weddings, but all photography. It is moderated by professional photographers and some of the advice and constructive criticism is amazing.
You guys should consider putting some of your photos of beasties and greenery on there as the standard on this site is very high. L-G, that means you too!

it is a Canon-specific site so Guy you may have to pretend you're one of the big boys for a while but I think you may manage!

Since the wedding I have posted some of my pictures for critiqueing http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum ... p?t=111556

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I like my neighbour's house- it's right up my street.

Thanks for those sites, Ingmar, and also the advice about buying equipment that I have received via private messages - very helpful for an amateur. Maybe I'll even try to shoot a few birds and other beasts and challenge the hotshots in this forum.

Could you let us in on the secret? What would be a good entry-level digital SLR that doesn't cost too much?

Forgot to say in the first post that you have to click on the forums to get to the photos, you also have to log in to see the pictures but it is well worth it.

Entry level SLR you say? I have been a fan of Canon since my father gave me his Pelix QL so would advise either a 300D if you want the real starter or the 350 if you want a really good one, but there is a couple of K between the two I believe. I'm presuming you want digital, otherwise I have a perfect EOS5 body in the original box which I may consider selling!
Guy uses a Nikon D60 I think so he'd be better to ask about Nikon.

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I like my neighbour's house- it's right up my street.

On the basis of detailed grilling of Ingmar, I was most impressed by the specifications of the Canon 350D - costs around K6 for the basic kit with an 18-85 zoom lens. The 5D was a very nice looking beast, but costs K20-25 which is serious money for an amateur.

Seems like a nice choice - here's a first couple of pictures with the standard kit lens

Congrats....... just looked at the specs & looks like a higher megapix version of the Nikon D70s, which including the same lens would have cost you about HK$ 8,000 + - so think you got a good deal & a good camera.
Doubts might be on the quality of the Kit lens vs the Nikon Kit lens, but difference to you & I would be negligible..

When I started using the D70, I stayed in the various "fixed" modes for a few months & then moved into "Manual", which I think in hindsight was a mistake.
Should've switched to "Aperture" mode after the first few months & might've had a better understanding of how it all works.
Have now switched to "Aperture" mode for nearly all the shots, switching to "Manual" when light or other conditions can't be handled so well by "Aperture".

But won't be switching to Canon........, Nikon just recently announced the 10mp D200 for about HK$ 13,000, having about 90% of the specs of their top of the range D2x (HK$ 34,000) in a more compact size.

Good luck & look forward to seeing yr pics

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My inability to tolerate your ambiguity is compounding my neurosis

I looked at a canon 350D in Fortress and it was more like $7500. Do you know an honest and reliable outlet for photographic equipment that would offer a better price?

This is a very interesting an informative discussion, and would proably be better in the "pictures and movies" thread - can we move it there?

OK, moved the entire topic....

By the way, the Photo Imaging Asa exbition is on at the Convention & Exhibiton Centre this weekend only, Hall 5. I might go there tomorrow afternoon, anybody want to come along?

There'll even be a "Wild Bird Photography" Open Forum and talk by Pippen Ho at 2:45pm, organised by Canon:

http://www.photoimagingasia.com.hk/defa ... site_id=18

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Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
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It's interesting that Nikon are giving a "WiFi Transmitting Technology" talk on Sunday. I wonder what their aim is ... instant image transmission from a camera?

I wish I could go to the show with you, but the commute distance is a bit of a challenge

Regarding the Bird Photography talk, surely our intrepid group of Lamma nature photographers could give a superb demonstration! And, it looks like Birdface has just gotten into the game with what appears to be a really decent camera.

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Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

I don't know what sort of reliability is expected of the typical digital camera these days (what with mechanical shutters and iris mechanisms still outclassing the electronic ones), but perhaps here's one for the books ...

My faithful old H-P C200 snapshot camera (actually made by Konica) has passed the million-picture mark and is still snapping away. It is doing duty as a webcam, taking a picture every three minutes, 24 hours/day, without a single failure since December 1999. I find it absolutely amazing that a mechanical-shutter low cost digicam can survive this sort of treatment. Included in this abuse is exposure of the CCD to direct sunlight every clear morning as the sun rises through the field of view, and baking in the hot sun all day long during the summer months. It's still running with its original flash memory card, which is rated for only 100,000 cycles. I'm afraid to shut it down for fear it won't start up again.

I wonder if today's crop of general-purpose snapshot cameras could do this?

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Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

Chuck, sounds like you're the go-to guy for low-cost web cams?
I'm actually looking around myself for 1-3 Wifi-connected webcams to show Yung Shue Wan, the windmill and the harbour from sunrise to sunset. I go the location, PC, broadband and Wifi setup by a friend in a house on top of Millionaire's hill. But I'll have to pay for the web cams myself - no sponsor interested yet - so they have to be really low-cost, including the Wi-fi connection.

I've used Axis web cams several times in the past professionally (still running today, showing live HK views over the web), but they're beyond my price range. Cheapo top-of-monitor webcams do not have the picture quality and software for uploading an automatically shot picture every few minutes to a website.

Any concrete advice - short of selling me your amazing-quality Konica as a precious & most reliable antique?

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Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

Yes, there was plenty of information for prospective buyers. It seemed like most of the punters were already pretty well stocked up with gear, though, and more interested in the babes in the short skirts.

Seems like the room was well supplied with testosterone-stoked photographers

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Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

Bollocks, I was hoping to go today as I was working all weekend. I have been doing a lot of work with digital imaging recently including making the 24 metre x 3 metre banners for the christmas fair which was in front of IFC last week.

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I like my neighbour's house- it's right up my street.

One thing certain ... low cost and high-quality/programmability are mutually exclusive, even with the technological advances we've seen in the past few years.

Low-cost webcams are generally crap, don't have iris motors in front of real CCD sensors, and the electronic compensation method (so-called "electronic iris") just doesn't cut it. My home-grown method involves a standard digital snapshot camera (with all its advantages and image quality) connected to a small PC-based server running Linux plus gPhoto plus ImageMagick software, so it's not terribly easy to set up. On the other hand, the ability to script just about any camera action you want is really nice. In my case it takes a picture every 3 minutes and combines them into an MPEG movie at the end of each day. Easy to do if you can write shell scripts

I'm very familiar with Axis cameras (I use them in my current career), and have written loads of driver software for them. You're right on both counts ... they are superb cameras and they are very expensive!

Should you want to park a snapshot camera on top of a hill along with a PC to control it, I'd be more than happy to help. It would be really grand to see live snapshots of the Lamma landscape!

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Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

Since Ingmar is preoccupied with the evil ferry-mongers, I'll pass on his recommendation to me of Coxell, who have various outlets, but the one I used was a small booth in the Wanchai computer centre. They seem very helpful and knowledgeable and offered better prices.

Meanwhile here are another couple of pictures (resized down of course)

I took this on Power Station beach last week. I was using a Kodak Sureshot.

Very nice, looks like it was handheld with the surf lapping round yr ankles as I think I detect a bit of a halo - very nice shot nonetheless - well done