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Which lens

H

hell_on_wheels

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<font color="ff0000"><font face="arial,helvetica"><font size="+1">Hi all!! I'm very new to all this forum thing so please bear with me. I've decided to upgrade my Nikon 18-70 3.5-5.6 lens for something much better. I have a Tokina 80-200 2.8 which does a wonderful job and is terrific in all those dark churches when I'm shooting a wedding. However I'd also like something wider to have on my other camera as well. I was thinking about the Nikon 17-55 2.8 to replace the 18-70. Any comments on this lens?
 
Hi David, is the 17-55 really sharp & fast? I really want a lens that gives crystal sharpness. I use a 50mm 1.8 sometimes but find the 50mm fairly limiting that's why I thought the 17-55 would be more serviceable. And obviously the 2.8 isn't going to be quite as sharp as the 1.8 but still should be pretty good.
 
> Rather than getting the kit lens I got the D70 body and the 17-55 A friend did the same. You won't be sorry. dhw
 
Check your manual - many Nikon digital cameras have a setting for B&W. However, it gives you limited control of the image, and most people find it better to shoot in colour and use image processing tools to achieve a far better image. Shooting in color of course also gives you a colour image, which can be desirable. It is very easy to take the colour OUT of an image but very difficult to put it IN a B&W.

For the last couple of decades of my film shooting career, I did all my B&W shooting on colour negative film. Many times an editor or client would look at my B&W prints and say "I wish I had assigned this in colour". I would reply that I could provide the same shots in colour and customer and photographer would bond!

For quality, you will do better starting with a colour image. At the simplest, you can just desaturate it, but you can also use the channel mixer to dial in the equivalent of any B&W filter after the fact. There is simply no advantage to shooting B&W in camera.

larry! http://www.larry-bolch.com/ ICQ 76620504
 
> You shoot in color and convert to black and white with programs such as > Photoshop. You cannot shoot in 'just' black and white -- which is a plus > because you can have both black and white and color.
 
most programs like Photoshop or the Nikon software are able to convert your color photo into b&w. I shoot in the RAW format with my D100 most times and that allows me more options after I download the photographs to my computer and it wont deteriorate the image quality every time I save it like JPEG files do.

Lou
 
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