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Forum: General Talk
05-01-2012, 10:51 PM
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I don't know the courier company's name but I really should find out so that I can contact them if necessary. I know they are based in Tamworth. It is the same driver every time, so I will ask for his card and/or mobile number. I haven't bothered previously but it could be useful. When I was living in Sydney and needed to contact the driver, I rang UPS or DHL (I forget which one) and they called the driver on his mobile and asked him to call me. In that case, it was their own driver though, not a contractor.
That is a security measure to combat credit card fraud. The delvery address and billing address have to be the same as that on the card. Here, I don't have that problem because the courier driver knows me and leaves the parcel at the local post office if I'm not home.
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Forum: General Talk
05-01-2012, 08:34 PM
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I buy reasonably often from either B & H or Adorama and reside in a small NSW country town about 5 hours by road from Sydney. I can confirm the o.p.'s experience but can also say it is not unique to UPS. Once the parcel arrives at Botany and is cleared through customs, it is handed on to the courier company contracted to perform local deliveries.
Except possibly for Sydney residents, the local courier is generally an independent company, so once the parcel is handed over to them, it is no longer trackable on the original carrier's system. In my case, the same local courier handles all three of DHL, Fedex, and UPS, so I always choose the cheapest one, UPS.
The local couriers don't generally work on weekends or public holidays, so it helps to time the placement of your order. For example, I recently ordered from Adorama but forgot about the upcoming Easter holidays. It was an anxious wait for almost a week while the parcel sat unmoving at the courier company's Botany facility. I try to order on Thursday or Friday local time so that the parcel gets to Sydney and is cleared through customs in time for the local courier to collect it on Monday.
Overwhelmingly, I am very satisfied with the service. So far, I haven't lost anything. On a couple of occasions, I have ordered on a Friday afternoon (local time) and had the parcel delivered to my door by 10am the next Tuesday morning. It takes longer to get a standard letter from Queensland. Ideally, the local courier should have a tracking system that picks up the orginal carrier's tracking number but they are not that sophisticated yet. The only tracking system seems to be the driver's mobile phone.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
04-23-2012, 09:25 PM
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Have a look at this:
You Tube
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src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZU5Hsa0VWic?controls=1" allowfullscreen>
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
04-19-2012, 06:29 PM
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K mount lenses can be used on Samsung NX with an adapter but of course you lose autofocus.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-16-2012, 06:45 PM
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Quote: To be competitive in the Digital SLR market you need a full range of cameras, for example Canon and Nikon have a range of 4 cameras from entry level to professional.
That statement alone is a clear indication that Pentax/Ricoh are not considering FF for the immediate future. The count of 4 models obviously does not include the Canikon FF models.
Canon: 1100D, 600D, 60D, 7D
Nikon: D3100, D5100, D7000, D300s (ignoring the D90)
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
01-30-2011, 11:56 PM
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That is an interesting read about the D7000 from a practical perspective.
Re the DA55-300 vs the Nikon 70-300VR:
About 6 months ago, I bought a D90 to try out as a possible replacement for my K100ds and sold my DA55-300 to help fund a Nikon 70-300VR. (tried the 55-200VR first but it was too short and fairly ordinary).
For me, the 70-300VR was not quite a match for the DA55-300. It had some better traits, e.g. slightly better auto-focusing consistency and VR better than Pentax IBIS (especially being able to see the stabilised image in the viewfinder) but its image quality was not quite as good. The difference was not huge and the image quality still very good but mine never quite achieved the same level of detail in bird feathers, for example.
The 70-300VR is also heavier and a strain to use one-handed such as when holding foliage out of the way with the other hand. Also it not as useful as a single-lens-for-the-day solution due to starting at 70 instead of 55. Nikon have since released their own 55-300 but I have not tried that. By then I had re-sold the D90 and 70-300VR and bought another DA55-300 (my third).
I wonder whether you are seeing improved image quality due to the body rather than the lens. In my case, I realised that I should have gone for the D300s rather than the D90 to gain a significant improvement. The D7000 has changed the equation a little but now I think I will stick with Pentax unless I can afford the successor to the D300s plus at least the Nikkor AF-S 300 F4.
Now to see whether I can attach some DA55-300 samples (this is my first post):
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