The thing is lenses are Optical, and are infinitely preferable to using any digital options for getting closer to your subject.

I regularly use a teleconverter on my camera, and rarely (in fact, never) see any distortion whatsoever.

There are a multitude reasons why you might want to remain distant from the subject your are photographing - ranging from being forced, to not wanting to disturb your subject.

A picture of musician John McCusker on stage - taken at full zoom with a 1.5x teleconverter - click here.

The above picture was taken with a Fuji Finepix S5000 in 2004 at the Sidmouth International Folk Festival from the "cheap seats" (ie sat on the grass).

I've never heard the woird Prosumer applied to anything other than this type of DC. Certainly not camcorders. I gues our experiences are simply different, and we'll have to agree to disagree.
Last edited by RobAnt : 24-07-2006 at 11:46

How long is a piece of string? NiMH batteries will last longer than any other type in a DC. Quite how long depends upon how you use it.

There are too many variables to give you any guarantees on duration - but if you're spending the day at an airshow, for instance, take one or two spare pre-charged sets.

A set of 4 x 1700 NiMH batteries in my Fuji 2800Zoom lasted all day in that camera, but take only about 150 pictures in my S5600, but I do use Continuous Auto Focus and zoom in and out a great deal.

In a point and shoot, you might find you won't need another set, but I ain't gonna guarantee it.

That's a pretty cool picture, did you use a tripod?

Yes, plus I used the camera's ability to take a sequence of photographs, as people don't stay still very long on stage, and it is a fairly low light situation.

Even a tripod isn't always enough if there is a degree of movement, you need people and things to cooperate (or to pan if following high speed objects).

As an example, look at John's left hand. All he is doing is adjusting the string tension, yet his hand has a fair degree of motion blur.

oh - and flash photography was absolutely banned.

Full portfolio here - Click