Bought a couple of Series VII adaptor rings for my ringflash and found I already had one in 52mm, hence sale. Brand new, made by Dorr. £6 including first-class UK postage. Payment by PayPal, cheque, whatever. A nicely made piece of kit for anyone who needs one.

Al

I was sitting outside my pals' house in France a couple of weeks ago and, inspired by one too many bottles of wine, I decided to try my hand at moon photography. I was reasonably pleased with the result, under the circumstances, and thought I'd put it up for comment. Here it is: link

The second photo is an interesting cloud formation that appeared shortly afterwards. It's dark and noisy (even after running it through Neat Image), but I'd be interested to hear any observations: link

Both were taken at 800 ISO with a GX-20, Pentax 55-300 lens and a monopod, which moved around a surprising amount under the influence of the best French domestic red.

I thought these would be more interesting than the dozens of medieval churches and forts that I seem to have filled my cards with. Typically, I can't remember where most of them are.

Apologies for putting up links but I've never mastered the art of posting images directly into the forum.

Al

I keep my bits and bobs safely in an old film canister. If only I could find it.

Al

You could try to find a Monovue filter, which you peer through and it essentially reduces a scene to its tonal values. I bought one years ago when I was determined to try out an old Bolex P1 cine camera with B&W film. Typically, I never did.

They work quite well in bright conditions but the yellow/green filter is pretty dense and they're all but unusable in dark conditions. SRB still lists them -- link-- but says they're unavailable. I suspect any dark filter would do the same thing, but the rubber eyecup on the Monovue keeps out extraneous light.

As others have said, your best bet is to develop an eye for it, and lots of practice is the only way.

Al

In the days of printing from B&W film, you'd expect a properly exposed image to go right down to the white "base" of the paper in areas that should be white. If there was no trace of a proper white, it was considered to be underexposed. How this relates to "blown highlights" in digital images is an interesting question.

Al

The latest GX-10 download (v 1.30) seems to be available from Samsung here link if you click "Firmware".

Al

I've been using a 19in ProLite E1903S for three or four years and find it well up to the job. It uses a TN panel, so presumably it has shortcomings compared to models with IPS panels, but the screen image matches the output from my Epson printer and work sent to outside printers as a PDF. That's good enough for me. Even though I haven't calibrated it (although I always plan to do this), it's pretty well spot on to my eye. Others may be more discerning.

Our IT department recommended Iiyama, so there seems to some sort of consensus (albeit from a small sample). Having said that, I believe this model has been discontinued. I'm sure their current models are just as good.

Al

On the MZ-M, which is based on the MZ-5, you select aperture priority by moving off the "A" setting on the lens and setting the aperture you want. There is no way of setting the aperture on the body. As Dangermouse suggests, you have to change the shutter speed. I believe the MZ-5 works in the same way.

Al

Sorry that I'm a little late coming in on this but would like to assure you that Serif (presumably a version of PhotoPlus) is well up to the job. I had a quick play last night with PhotoPlus X3 and following technique worked well

1) Open image
2) Create duplicate layer
3) Add a layer mask to this layer
4) Select the new layer
5) Activate "mesh warp" tool and pull the bottom corners of the image very slightly to the left until the bollards and house are vertical
6) Make background layer invisible by clicking "eye" icon
7) Select black as the foreground painting colour and paint out everything in the image that you want to to remain unaltered, making it transparent. I erased everything down to the top of the house.
8 ) Click the "eye" again to make the original layer visible.

Job done. The advantage of using layers is that this leaves the original image unaltered and nothing's lost if you mess up.

Hope this helps

Al

You're more than welcome.

Al