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.

Couldn't tell you which camera (which camera), but you want to have the film speed (or digital equivalent) set as high as possible, the shutter speed as fast, and the aperture as large as possible. That will maximise the light and the light sensitivity.

eta: Oh, and don't forget bracing as firmly as possible.

Anyone know a simple way to convert a date in US format (eg: "11/2/2007") to English format? (eg: in dd/mm/yyyy instead of mm/dd/yyyy) using XSL?

I mean, aside from writing code that deconstructs the date and reconstructs it into the English format - is there a built-in conversion for this?

meara, you'd do best with a DSLR with an image stabilized lens. I've been able to take handheld shots with very slow shutter speeds with mine. It's gained be probably two stops, I've had luck with handheld shots as slow a 1/6 of a second shutter speed.

Anyone know a simple way to convert a date in US format (eg: "11/2/2007") to English format? (eg: in dd/mm/yyyy instead of mm/dd/yyyy) using XSL?

XSLT 2.0 has built-in regular expressions. If you don't have XSLT 2.0, your particular vendor might include some kind of non-standard regexp extension. Otherwise, you'll have to futz around with substring-before, substring-after, and concat.

XSLT 2.0 has built-in regular expressions. If you don't have XSLT 2.0, your particular vendor might include some kind of non-standard regexp extension.

How do I tell what version the servers are using? Is the easiest way just to specify 2.0 in the XSL and see if it errors?

So in this line:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema" version="1.0">

the "1.0" is the XSLT version no.?

Yeah, it's XSLT 1.0.

You'll have to use:

concat(substring-before(substring-after(date, "/"), "/"), "/", substring-before(date, "/"), "/", substring-after(substring-after(date, "/"), "/"))

I feel like I have a lot to add, but my brains a bit addled. So I'll only say this (and it may drive Tom mad) all that stuff about aperature and F-stops was really valuable to learn, and then really easy to forget as taking pictures became more instinctive.

Huh, I used to shoot indoor theatrical shots with 800 speed film. Very low light. I'd have to be careful to have a stable shooting platform, but I always got lots of very good shots.

400 was usually my default film speed and I got some pretty good theatre shots.

Megan, I have a K1000 too, but I haven't actually used it in yonks.