Nice set, especially the soup eaters and the two trolleys.

Looking forward to seeing more.

No. 2 is my pick, the sun and shade work really well. However, while I am not keen on the large shadow in the foreground of no. 1, I think this image has a lot of potential. I hope you don't mind but I fiddled with it, cropping it, adjusting levels and curves, and dodging and burning the tracks slightly.

Nice shots, especially the one of Bootsy, who has just released a new album!

I opened the DNG file in Camera Raw, reduced noise, opened it in CS5, copied a layer, straightened using transform>skew, then flattened the image. Adjusted levels, slight curves adjustment, flattened again (it's just the odd way I work), then copied the sky to another layer (feathered 50 pixels), and applied 3.5 pixels of gaussian blur. I then reduced the noise on this layer (the sky seems very noisy in the original file). I copied the building with lots of orange lights in the right foreground to another layer, used a high pass filter at 2.3 pixels, and changed the blend mode to soft light. Then I flattened the image, sharpened it using unsharp mask and resized it.

Interesting thread. I have never used a grip and don't want to try one in case I like it. I think I am lucky though in that the K7 (and the K5 when I finally get round to getting one) seem to have been designed to fit my hand exactly. It feels just right as it is, which is why I have not been tempted for portabilities sake to give in to EVIL impulses and switch to micro four thirds. The idea of making my kit heavier than it is already is not one I want to explore.

That looks a lot better but maybe it's cropped just a little too close to the bird on the right hand side? I think it would be better with the bird bang on a third. Likewise the other picture could do with a bit more space on the left, if the crop removed some of that?

Thanks I-berg and Jeff+1! I can't walk past glass buildings without looking to see what is reflected in them lately, and Houston is an excellent place for this! I am gradually putting together a collection of pictures like this with the aim of eventually doing a Blurb book. From the very favourable reaction to no 6, I think it will adorn the cover

It's a very nice shot. I like the colours, and the post and wire fence the bird is sitting on; it could do with cropping though. I would take some off the right hand side, to put the bird on a third and looking into the frame, and some off the top to keep the landscape format. It's also perhaps a tad bright? It's a shame we can't really see it's eye.

Thanks for the comments!


Yes, it's taken me a while to get the hang of this lens; it works well at 18mm (as good if not better than the WR kit lens), needs to be stopped down to f8 at 100mm, f16 at 135mm, opened to f6.5 at 180mm, f16 at 250mm....at least that's what appears to me to work best. It also needs the lens correction in Camera Raw, which works very well.