ChrisLumix

All The Young Dudes is a great song! And Mott The Hoople are/were a great band. But (sorry) I couldn't resist this...

Shakespeare at work writing "Romeo & Ethel The Pirate's Daughter".

That's the only track of his I'd got on my iTunes, by a weird coincidence.

I use a Mac, and sometimes I see this kind of thing on websites! (Probably people too lazy to code for Safari despite it being used on every iPhone, every iPad, and a large proportion of the world's laptops...)

I think you're quite right Martyn - you're a new convert to macro, so it's early days. Better to keep your powder (and bank balance) dry until you see if it's worth the considerable further expenditure.

You're both assuming that everyone here has a camera with interchangeable lenses. I don't, unless I go back to my Minolta XD7 and film. So I need another solution and I'm grateful for all the advice concerning reversing rings, Raynox lenses, etc.

(( D'OH! (Like the Scotsman at a buffet who asked "Is that a pudding or amerang?" - you have to say it with a Scottish accent ))

That'll be the same size as my FZ38 - can you let me know what you got? (Mind you, the filter size of the Rokkor will be MASSIVE, it's an f1.4 lens after all)

(can you explain your thinking Martyn? - I don't see that one) BALLERINA

I can see that - digital has become as good as film, and can even emulate the particular qualities of particular films of the past. It's not like vinyl where the sound quality of analogue is actually different than digital, and is actually preferred by many, even the young. In some ways, "digital" has always been with us: B&W photos printed in newspapers consisted of black and white dots only, with the distribution of each deciding the greys. TV screens too - even colour TVs were just mixtures of RGB dots (no different from digicams with their RGB filters for each pixel). Digital is simply emulating what has been at the heart of photography for all time - is the emulsion fully exposed to white, or still black? Shades of grey were just half exposed emulsion. One grain of silver halide can be replaced by a few pixels.

Bookcase? Dresser? Oh wait, you mean a commode! That's the politest way of saying I'm full of...

Enough already!

Listen, do you think it's EASY to take a picture on a self-timer when you're lying in a grave? Don't you realise the skull involved?

I don't suppose there is any way in the world I could use that principle to reverse my ancient Auto Rokkor 58mm f1.4 lens onto my Lumix FZ superzoom....?

Yes - it's a fascinating question. Vinyl was kept alive - and is now alive and well - by the large format (12") required by DJ's who needed to use it for scratching and mixing. As large format film is still needed, will that keep film alive, or will the ability of modern digicams to 'emulate' old films mean that in time film will completely die?

Ok, time to join in.

O M G

Good to see you again Steve, our third site we've both been members together on. Hope you get used to my orangey-brown text as I find the grey-on-black hard to read!

Yes, that was very interesting, though much of it was [mimes hand going over head]. Those two pictures were a bit misleading - clearly the one on the right was sharper to the eye, but did you see how much JPEG degradation was in it? And the later pictures of the video camera - he was right that on "first glance" the one on the right looked sharper (because of higher contrast), but when you looked even a little bit closer, it was obvious that the picture on the left showed far more fine detail. The eye is so easily fooled! Perhaps the most interesting fact in the whole presentation was the information that 35mm film has spatial resolution equivalent to 19.5 MP!

MURDOCH

Alice: You know that stuff they're selling now at the local shop? Geraldine: Which stuff? Alice: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Geraldine: Oh, yes. Alice: Well, I can't believe it's not butter. Geraldine: Yeah, well I believe that is the idea, yeah. Alice: Then yesterday, I went to Crookenden and I bought this other stuff, like a sort of home-brand, you know? Geraldine: Yes... Alice: And you know, I can't believe it's not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Geraldine: Mmm. I'm losing you now. Alice: Well, you know I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? Geraldine: Yeah, you think it is butter. Alice: No no, I mean you know the stuff that I can't believe is not butter is called I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Geraldine: Probably, yeah, yeah. Alice: Well I can't believe the stuff that is not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and I can't believe that both I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and the stuff that I can't believe is not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter are both, in fact, not butter. And I believe they both might be butter, in a cunning disguise. And in fact there's a lot more butter around than we all thought there was. Geraldine: Yeah. You see, I don't know what you're talking about.

BAG

No wonder I didn't get it - I only eat butter

I think you're right Richard - I haven't used my Sony camcorder for years, not since owning a Lumix FZ with HD video which I can zoom as much as the still modes. I don't see the point of lugging 2 things around when I've got the best of both worlds (well, "best" sub-DSLR, I mean) in one fairly lightwieght camera.

Yes, film is still king for larger formats where sensors would have to be inordinately large (and therefore too expensive). I do like the way that the latest digicams have 'film modes' where you can recapture the characteristics of legendary films such as Ilford FP4/HP4, Tri-X, and Kodachrome 25/64. Mind you, I think digital surpassed colour print film long ago.