Folks, If anyone needs inspiration for their 35mm photography, they should see the Wildlife photographer of the year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London (not much use to people in far flung corners I know!). The images are nearly all taken on 35mm and the quality, aesthetically and technically, is, as always, stunning. To make it Nikon specific, nearly every picture (all technical details are captioned, camera, lens, film, which is nice) is on Nikon or Canon-no one else gets a look in. More interesting, the vast majority were taken on Eos-1. Of the Nikon piccies, most are F5. This made me think about how Canon have dominated pro sales over the last few years, as in other areas such as sport. The fact that the F5 is about the only Nikon camera featured suggests that it may be winning significant pro sales and swinging the balance . Also, for those of you wondering about image quality with converters, a lot of the winning shots were on 400 or 500mm lenses with converters and looked superb. These images by worldwide wildlife pros really show the quality of 35mm under difficult conditions (and I certainly couldn't tell the difference between Canon and Nikon optics under the exhibition conditions). I get the feeling we split hairs sometimes about image quality-after all, what are we aiming for in our photography. World class images such as these? If so, don't worry about minutiae of brands of skylight filter or the 1005 pixel meter-just try and take images like these. I would recommend anyone who can get to London to see the exhibition (11X14 and 20X16 inch backlit cibachromes by the way)to do so. Stewart
