I hear ya on avoiding the lustful upgrade path for a camera body. I personally am planning on keeping my D50 for many years and only putting out funds for lenses, as they hold their "technology" better with age. Some of the best lenses out there have been around for 10 years. But as long as my D50 is going what I want for me then I see no reason to upgrade.. at least not until there is something vastly superior for a reasonable price... I dont see that happening for quite some time.

I spend quite a bit of time in photography forums and the D100 is an awesome camera. You certainly use it well!

Thanks for the tips on the melamine, I had not thought of that. I will look around for some black melamine and give it a whirl.

Take Care,
-Ryan







>>>a Sunpak AF5000 speedlight. When I was initially looking at speedlights (which was like 4 years ago - geez where has the time gone?!), there weren't a whole lot of choices with Nikon. I remember they had one for $150 to $200 but it used some special batteries that were really expensive and not rechargeable. Then there was another model that was a great speedlight but was $350 and at the time (being a student and all) I just really couldn't jusity spending $350 on a flash.

SO...I visited a couple of photography forums and got some opinions and the Sunpak speedlights seemed to be everyone's recommendation. So that's what I ended up getting. It takes 4 AA batteries which I use the 15 minute rechargeable ones from Rayovak and I can take a few hundred photos with the speedlight before I need to recharge the batteries.

I do however use a Nikon D100 camera. At the time I got my camera, the choices were the Coolpix cameras, the D100, the D1H and the D1X - that was it! I would have LOVED a D1X but that was like $4,000 or $5,000 for the camera body alone at the time. So I got the D100 and it's one of the BEST cameras I have ever used! Even now, with the Nikon D2X out, I can't really justify getting a new system because my current one works so well for what I need it to do!

Anyways, for backgrounds, I use either white melamine or black melamine. I think I like the black melamine better for most animals because it's not bright like the white and doesn't bounce my flash back at the camera as much. There is a slight reflection of the animal on the black melamine but it is very slight and I like the way it looks. It's there yet it isn't so heavy that it becomes distracting and takes away from your main subject - the animal you are trying to show off!

If you haven't tried a melamine background yet, I would give that a shot. I don't bounce the flash on these shots but I do adjust the flash intensity for almost every single photo.

Thanks,
Celia>>>

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