I find that if there's something I can brace my arm (the one holding the camera) against, I can take pretty good low-light or zoom shots without a tripod.

Even that makes my brain hurt.

That's the reason that it's expressed as an f-stop. Basically if you choose F4 on a 135mm lens and on a 35mm lens it should behave pretty pretty close to the same way, even though the size of the aperture letting light to the image sensor is different. If it was just a direct reference to the size of the aperture opening you'd be consulting a chart every time you put a lens with a different focal length on your camera.

The simple version, is the f-stop is lens focal length divided by aperture diameter.

Even that makes my brain hurt.

You just gotta remember that f-stop represents the opposite of what you might think it does....

eta: for all values of "opposite" = "inverse"....

dcp had a TZ-3 at the F2F.

I love this sentence.

He was complaining about the poor low-light performance, too.

Glad it's not just me.

I tried to find some and never really did.

How long ago was this? (hoping, probably in vain, that there's a newer option for me)

I used to shoot indoor theatrical shots with 800 speed film

Sounds reasonable. I don't see how it contradicts my point.

One thing I have never had is a good flash setup. I've been trying recently to expand in that direction, but I don't like travelling that heavy, and I hate on-camera flash and that standard held out to the left as far as possible lighting angle.

I don't like travelling that heavy.

This is the problem with the tripod for sure. I generally don't pack my flash. And I use my 70-210mm so seldom than I'm not sure why I bother with that either.

I gave up on the conversation, I was copying a file off a failing HDD, and it was sucking down processing power.

You guys were all doing a good job, anyway.

ION, now that I am free to post...

Webmonkey is reporting that Microsoft has finally released converters for OSX versions of Office to convert files to Open XML. [link]

What I really have found I need is a camera that will let me take good pictures of things that are happening on stage, well lit on stage (and likely moving around quickly on stage), when I am in a crowd, in the dark. AKA "I'm at a drag show". What the heck camera and setting do I use for THAT?

What I really have found I need is a camera that will let me take good pictures of things that are happening on stage, well lit on stage (and likely moving around quickly on stage), when I am in a crowd, in the dark. AKA "I'm at a drag show". What the heck camera and setting do I use for THAT?

My only complaint is manually focusing; I hate that.

I miss that. My little Canon digital is pretty versatile, but I can't convince it I want the leaf and not the flower.