The EXIF is still embedded in all the images Lynn, you can view them all at
http://www.pbase.com/gareth_horne/legends2006&page=1 , just click the ‘full exif’ if necessary.
Dbenz, the vertical Buchon shot is about about 1.1 million pixels (out of 12.2) so yes its a pretty major crop, so not much use for printing at any worthwhile resolution. Its rare for me to crop much but this shows what’s possible when necessary. The D2X has a digital crop factor very similar to yours (1.5) so the 300mm has a field of view equivalent to 450mm in 35mm terms. It also has a high speed crop mode which uses the centre 6.8 million pixels (plenty of resolution for most uses) with a digital crop of 2.0 (that’s 600mm F2.8 if you are still thinking in 35mm field of view!) Its occasionally useful but to be honest I don’t (need to) use it that much.
My lens is rather old now (10 years) so its pretty heavy (steel and brass, rather than aluminium and carbon fibre of the new models) and no image stabilisation. Shutter speed wise I tend to stick to 1/320th or 1/250th, any lower than that and my failure rate tends to be rather high! Any more than 1/320th gives the dreaded frozen blade syndrome. Its just a case of practising your panning technique until you can go low enough. Didn’t use one this weekend but a monopod can be useful for panning take off shots etc and is probably good for another stop or 2 of shutter speed. The head on spitfire was shot at 1/320th, which given the engine is at full take off power, will give acceptable amounts of prop blur.
My other telephoto lens is a 70-200 F2.8 lens which has image stabilisation. Its a great, flexible lens for a lot of stuff ( and with a 1.4x converter gives me 280mm F4 image stabilised) but I’d always choose the prime even without image stabilisation, it really is that good.
I used to meter the same as you in film days but not any more. Exposure wise the D2X is just about spot on in all situations (standard matrix metering, add about +0.3 for flying aircraft, bit more for dark subjects, bit less for silver/white subjects), much, much better than anything else I’ve ever used. I do check the histograms regularly when shooting, to push it as far to the right as possible without blowing the important highlights.
Always shoot raw of course (when shooting for myself, if someone wants some quick photos I’ll use large fine jpg) so yes they’ve all had levels, highlight/shadow adjustment, and USM, but I don’t spend long on each image, once they are all set most are batched with little tweaking to each.
Hope that’s of some interest to you, prior to getting the 300mm (second hand) I used a 50-500mm sigma. I got some great photos with it and for flexibility it takes some beating. Once I’d used a fast prime though (even one considerably shorter), I’d never go back.
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