Those are excellent Spad...as others have said.

Wow...900MB images...as a matter of interest what size would they print out at 300ppi?

Keep up the experimentation...its keeping the site going!

regards

Karlo

Beautiful images, sublime colours and gorgeous bokeh.

Well impressed with those.

Karlo

I have to agree with Spad on this subject...things are not going to end well for the Human race if we cannot reign in and strongly regulate AI.

I've just copied and pasted this that i read a few days ago...was spoilt for choice when trying to decide which article to highlight on the dangers of AI.

Anthropic said its latest artificial intelligence model resorted to blackmail when told it would be taken offline.

In a safety test, the AI company asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant to a fictional company, but then gave it access to (also fictional) emails saying that it would be replaced, and also that the engineer behind the decision was cheating on his wife. Anthropic said the model “[threatened] to reveal the affair” if the replacement went ahead.

AI thinkers such as Geoff Hinton have long worried that advanced AI would manipulate humans in order to achieve its goals. Anthropic said it was increasing safeguards to levels reserved for “AI systems that substantially increase the risk of catastrophic misuse.”

Every week now there is a report from Industry geeks following the latest developments in AI with stories similar to the one above.

The problem is this technology is being funded and advanced by the worst kind of people often in secret and with little or no oversight by society as a whole.

The technology is advancing so fast as several nations compete with each other to be first to the ultimate AI...that we may not live long enough to see the next Pentax DSLR emerge !

Well put Steve.

Re. weighting tripods...i've used round 'free weights' ...used to do a lot of weight training...bench presses and stuff when younger...sold most of the stuff years ago but kept a few smaller weights...1kg/2kg...might even have a 5kg as well. With an old tie or belt pushed through the hole in the middle these hang well from tripods and the different weights allow for different scenarios...inside/outside...on foot or have a car...still or windy...quite cheap to pick up at car boots as well.

It's surprising how much more stable a Manfrotto 055 becomes with even a 1kg weight hung about 15-20" underneath.

Great idea and really well executed John.

it's a great advert for the capability of the camera too.

regards

Karlo

The bokeh in No.5 is a bit too distracting for me...so i'll opt for No.2 as its closer to the type of Bluebell images I try and take myself.

Always look forward to this time of year for the green and lilac combination...isn't Nature wonderful?

Regards

Karlo

Really good...love the different colour tones and composition.

One advantage of passing the same landscape on a regular basis...lends itself to this kind of mini project.

Cheers

Karlo

I knew there had to be a sensible explanation Spad...

Specialist gear from you both...but what is going on?

We have a white collar looking like something you'd leave the vets with usually around the neck or head
of a sick animal and on Spad's we have a tripod dressed with a black skirt!