Post the most ridiculous comments you've received with a big lens on!

smittymike19 wrote in post #4674327
um, anyone else think that most of these replies are rude? if someone asks you a question give them the answer. There is no need to be rude because someone doesnt know something. be thankful that they are interested in you. remember, you do not know everything, and if you ask someone a question you would want them to be respectful and give you a proper answer. i didnt realize that there was such snobbery to go along with buying a camera and learning how to use it.

I agree 100%. I was flabbergasted as I read through this thread.

smittymike19 wrote in post #4674327
um, anyone else think that most of these replies are rude? if someone asks you a question give them the answer. There is no need to be rude because someone doesnt know something. be thankful that they are interested in you. remember, you do not know everything, and if you ask someone a question you would want them to be respectful and give you a proper answer. i didnt realize that there was such snobbery to go along with buying a camera and learning how to use it.

Granted, but some of these people asking the questions should be up for the Darwin Awards... I hope that if anyone asks a reasonable question that they would get a reasonable answer... When someone asks you if the lens is a substitute for a small penis, they aren't really interested in photography just extracting the urine...

Kennymc wrote in post #4674419
Granted, but some of these people asking the questions should be up for the Darwin Awards... I hope that if anyone asks a reasonable question that they would get a reasonable answer... When someone asks you if the lens is a substitute for a small penis, they aren't really interested in photography just extracting the urine...

No, but I see a lot of people literally making fun of passers-by for asking about the zoom of a lens.

aCiD99 wrote in post #4670192
The only thing stopping me from snapping in some way was the fact I'd just met all these people days before, probably would have been a poor start to a 3 year relationship :P

Edit: It's also kinda funny, because what you just suggested would have fit VERY well... LOL

If you want to be nice about it and still tell them off, let them use your camera, but before handing it to them put it in full manual with a 30" exposure at f/22 and see if they like the results as much as the pictures you were just showing.

PiRho wrote in post #4672328
Man I really like this one! I will be very tempted to try this one, depending on how insulted I feel by the person. I Agree with most on this thread, I do want to encourage people in photography if they are truly interested, but when they start to make intentional insults about me/my gear... that is just not right, and I have never been the best at that biblical "turn the other cheek" thing.

~Z

I got an email from a friend once "Those are good photos, you must have a great camera!". I replied "Thanks for your lovely email, you must have a great keyboard!".

smittymike19 wrote in post #4674327
um, anyone else think that most of these replies are rude? if someone asks you a question give them the answer. There is no need to be rude because someone doesnt know something. be thankful that they are interested in you. remember, you do not know everything, and if you ask someone a question you would want them to be respectful and give you a proper answer. i didnt realize that there was such snobbery to go along with buying a camera and learning how to use it.

for me it's all in fun. I joke around a lot and it's kinda fun to think of some of these answers to those questions. I mean, it's like when you're asked what year was the war of 1812? or at wdw, What time is the 3 o'clock parade? The answers are right in front of you if you take the time to find it. But not everybody is quick witted here...except maybe the posters, so we all get caught off guard and actually tell the answer. This thread is about the ridiculous comments we get with our lens...and some of us just happen to have some quick responses so some questions/comments that we think is funny.

Aaagogo wrote in post #4670596
you are a nice guy then, If it was me and she was dis'ing my camera, my gear and on top of that, ME oh... all hell is going to break loose. I could care less about anything, if someone doesn't understand the basic decency of respecting others before expecting them to respect you, then F u, i'm going to rain **** on u and put you into your place.

Law school is the kind of place where if you tell someone something it gets around fast, if you snap at someone, everyone knows inside of a day. And these people are the kind that will use **** against you to get what they want. So you gotta be on edge. Great fun it is...

Well in retrospect, the anger which boiled inside over the next day ended up causing me to snap just a little at someone else who did the same thing the next evening. I didn't like him very much in the first place, so it was ok :P

(In fact he's sitting next to me right now in class, don't tell him!)

aLFaDaRK wrote in post #4674562
If you want to be nice about it and still tell them off, let them use your camera, but before handing it to them put it in full manual with a 30" exposure at f/22 and see if they like the results as much as the pictures you were just showing.

This is also something I don't do often enough. It allows that person to embarrass themselves WITHOUT you looking like a dick! (Probably because most of the time you wouldn't want the people that fall under this category holding your camera anyways.)

jonnythan wrote in post #4674551
No, but I see a lot of people literally making fun of passers-by for asking about the zoom of a lens.

Well maybe this forum should come up with what would be the most correct, yet polite and constructive answer we can give to that question. I personally liked the formula given before, zoom divided by 50 times 1.6 (for a croper).

Or, most P&S es start at about 30mm equiv, so we could say zoom / 30 * 1.6

That way someone gets a constructive answer, and it will generally get them to ask a another question (such was, if its only a 2x zoom lens, why is it so huge!) after which you can enlighten them about the light sucking capability of your lens.

agent.media wrote in post #4675130
Well maybe this forum should come up with what would be the most correct, yet polite and constructive answer we can give to that question. I personally liked the formula given before, zoom divided by 50 times 1.6 (for a croper).

Or, most P&S es start at about 30mm equiv, so we could say zoom / 30 * 1.6

That way someone gets a constructive answer, and it will generally get them to ask a another question (such was, if its only a 2x zoom lens, why is it so huge!) after which you can enlighten them about the light sucking capability of your lens.

I usually just say the focal length. "It's a 70-200mm" that way if they really know nothing and just wanted to hear a big number, they're appeased, and if they do indeed have camera knowledge they're appeased. Win win.

tkoutdoor wrote in post #4668144
I think when most people say "zoom" they are working from a logical average human non-photographer vocabulary and we immediately tend to interpret what they say in the accurate sense of the word for our vocabulary as photographers.

I think what the average person means to say is, "How many times more magnification can you see with that over what I can see with my own eyes?" From that perspective my answer is formulated based on "focal length X 1.6 / 50". Essentially the same basic method used to calculate "powers" for a pair of binoculars. So for a 500mm lens (on a 1.6 crop body) I'd be saying, "The zoom of this lens is 16x normal vision or 16x (16 power)". The direct answer would be, "It has a 16 power zoom and it doesn't actually zoom in and out like a pair of binoculars. It's fixed at the maximum zoom". If they were interested in knowing how I arrived at that I'd explain the formula using 50mm = human vision as "normal" and 16 times normal as a "common" way of determining the zoom.

jonnythan wrote in post #4674551
No, but I see a lot of people literally making fun of passers-by for asking about the zoom of a lens.

agent.media wrote in post #4675130
Well maybe this forum should come up with what would be the most correct, yet polite and constructive answer we can give to that question. I personally liked the formula given before, zoom divided by 50 times 1.6 (for a croper).

Or, most P&S es start at about 30mm equiv, so we could say zoom / 30 * 1.6

That way someone gets a constructive answer, and it will generally get them to ask a another question (such was, if its only a 2x zoom lens, why is it so huge!) after which you can enlighten them about the light sucking capability of your lens.

99% of the people who ask you about the "zoom" value of a lens are looking for the number comparable to point-n-shoot lenses. That number is simply the longest focal length divided by the shortest focal length.

The formula that tkoutdoor was suggesting does not calculate anything resembling "zoom", but a magnification value based on a "normal" lens. Read tkoutdoor's formula (quoted above) and you'll notice it refers to focal length, not "zoom".

Thus, the "zoom divided by 50 times 1.6" formula idea is invalid in answering the typical question of "How much zoom does that lens have?" unless you do two things. First, replace "zoom" with whatever focal length you are referring to. Second, inform the person you'd be answering after doing the calculation that the answer is akin to the "power" rating of a binocular rather than the "zoom" of anything.

SkipD wrote in post #4675756
99% of the people who ask you about the "zoom" value of a lens are looking for the number comparable to point-n-shoot lenses. That number is simply the longest focal length divided by the shortest focal length.

The formula that tkoutdoor was suggesting does not calculate anything resembling "zoom", but a magnification value based on a "normal" lens. Read tkoutdoor's formula (quoted above) and you'll notice it refers to focal length, not "zoom".

Thus, the "zoom divided by 50 times 1.6" formula idea is invalid in answering the typical question of "How much zoom does that lens have?" unless you do two things. First, replace "zoom" with whatever focal length you are referring to. Second, inform the person you'd be answering after doing the calculation that the answer is akin to the "power" rating of a binocular rather than the "zoom" of anything.

I think that when 99% of people ask you what the zoom is on that lens, they want a number that correlates to what they're used to with the "3x zoom" and "8x zoom" point and shoot cameras. With a 1.6 crop body, that means "take the 35mm equivalent focal length of your lens and divide it by 35mm." For a 300mm lens, that would be "300 * 1.6 / 25 = 13.7x."

SkipD wrote in post #4675756
99% of the people who ask you about the "zoom" value of a lens are looking for the number comparable to point-n-shoot lenses. That number is simply the longest focal length divided by the shortest focal length.

The formula that tkoutdoor was suggesting does not calculate anything resembling "zoom", but a magnification value based on a "normal" lens. Read tkoutdoor's formula (quoted above) and you'll notice it refers to focal length, not "zoom".

Thus, the "zoom divided by 50 times 1.6" formula idea is invalid in answering the typical question of "How much zoom does that lens have?" unless you do two things. First, replace "zoom" with whatever focal length you are referring to. Second, inform the person you'd be answering after doing the calculation that the answer is akin to the "power" rating of a binocular rather than the "zoom" of anything.

... Long extenuated "Al Gore" sigh.... (:rolleyes Here we go again... I notice you didn't quote the part that said the technical details weren't the point and please don't go there, but that giving the questioner an answer he would understand was the point. Zoom also has more than one meaning as I pointed out a couple thousand posts back when we went through all this then. Technical photographer jargon is not the point as I've stated, but giving the one asking the question an answer that is within his own vocabulary is. We do ourselves an injustice when we Lord over them our "correct" understanding of the proper terminology and ignore the basic premise of their question.

No, rather divide it by 50 mm, as that's the focal length (for a 35 mm camera, but you already converted the focal length for that) a lens is traditionally compared to. Hence a 300 mm lens is said to have a six times magnification, which on a 1.6 crop yields 9.6 times, says my old Hewlett-Packard 34C, if anyone can remember such an animal.

Thinking about it, I've actually had a similar comment, at a party. I was taking some shots with my first DSLR, an EOS 400D. The lens was nothing spectacular, as it was the infamous EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 II. I didn't have anything else wide enough at that time. But to get some reasonable light, I had the "hammer style" Metz Mecablitz 45 CT-4 beside the camera, on that rail mount you screw into the tripod thread.

One of the partygoers commented: "That must be a very lousy camera, if you need a flash that big!"

For those who never have encountered that kind of flash unit, you get an idea of the size when I tell you it's 50% more powerful than Canon's top flash today, the Speedlite 580 EX II and 20+ years older.

apersson850 wrote in post #4675844
No, rather divide it by 50 mm, as that's the focal length (for a 35 mm camera, but you already converted the focal length for that) a lens is traditionally compared to. Hence a 300 mm lens is said to have a six times magnification, which on a 1.6 crop yields 9.6 times, says my old Hewlett-Packard 34C, if anyone can remember such an animal.

I think most people are more used to ther point and shoot cameras with zoom that most often have an equivalent focal length range of about 35mm to (stated zoom)*35mm.

Take the Canon SD1000, for instance. It has a focal range of 5.8 - 17.4mm and a 35mm equivalent range of 35-105mm.

This 105mm focal length is what a consumer expects with a "3x" zoom. A 1Ds with a 100mm prime lens ought to be called "fixed at about 3x zoom" to the layperson who asks "what kinda zoom you got on there?" A 400D with a 200mm prime should be referred to as "fixed at about 9x zoom."

That's what they're asking for. That's what they understand and that's the kind of answer they expect. They don't care about "magnification" or what lenses are "traditionally compared to." They want to know how much more (or less) it can reach than the point and shoot camera in their pocket.