Well...look closely at the second to last pic, of the camera in "auto" mode. Maybe that will perk your spirits a bit. I had to look at it a couple of times to figure out what made that image so unique.

The big glass is very impressive, no doubt. Coupla those lenses there cost more than a good house in most states.

Thanks - some great shots, and some surprising apertures.

Thanks Douglas! Side splitting!!

Oh, those settings? You should've asked me mate! That'll be KAMA Settings/Positions 65 66 67 68. Yeah that was the model missing 69 and 69b. It's now a downloadable Preset - you can just . . er .. insert it.

Grazie



very very funny

Sorry Pete! Sh££t I'm so slow . . . very good.

That website triggers my "dangerous website warning" in my Trend Micro. Something called "joke".

JJK

i have a creepy feeling the guy in the third pic shot the second one

good stuff,

Spot, absolutely amazing collection, and great juxtaposition.

Grazie, excellent insight. I spent ten times longer, staring at that one. Is "Stonefield" still around? He might have something similar on his cams, although perhaps a toned-down version.

The freshwater dunk is one I've heard of and almost resorted to when my wife put my son's iPod through the washing machine a few months back.

I've got a feeling the little kid photographing the croc (or gator?) was about to learn that those creatures can move amazingly quickly when provoked. Hopefully he didn't lose a leg in the process.

One thing I wonder--why do all those photographers carry around such big refractors? Surely a compact folded-mirror system would give just as much aperture, resolution, and focal length, yes?

Catadioptric ("folded-mirror") telephoto lenses have been used, but never become popular, for good reasons imho (I used to shoot with an amazingly compact 8/500mm).

The f/stop is fixed at whatever the design comes out to, usually f/8 or f/11, and it's downhill from there because of the T-stop loss from the secondary mirror blocking a fair amount of the incoming light.

The bokeh (visual appearance of out-of-focus objects) also looks outright unpleasant, like something out of a science fiction film.

Canon made a 5200mm lens for border patrol use in remote regions, they chose to make even this monster a traditional straight telephoto design.

And straight telephoto lenses make much better coffee table legs too, as we saw in one of these pix :O) What a blast, thanks Spot!