, that was a lovely read Mike, well spotted. One noth up for Pentax then, and what a scalp , taken from Canon, that is quite a big one

Judith I know what you mean, may be I worded it incorrectly, what I meant was that he has his sweet little tantrums and splashes himself on the floor when he wants something, specially when he wants his favourite channel on when dad wants to watch footie lol. But usually he is pretty accomodating so still reasonably easy to not say no. But its still early days , and I know what's coming, just give him a year or two more and I will be losing the rest of my hair .

Oh loved the B&W, I couldn't achieve that result, but as I said, surely its my limited ability with the editor.

I will gladly send you the RAW file if you want to mess around a bit more with the image , be my guest. Just let me know and I will pass it on to you.
And oh thank you so much for the image

Bob, your daughter's photos are absolutely nice, love the DOF particularly on the first one. And from the top menu numbers 2 and 3 for me are stunners.
keep them coming

tried B&W but definitely I am not cut out for this, am such a disaster at editing
this is the best I could come up with and left it in colour. But its too much crop for the size of the image. Its starting to lose quality, the crispiness in colour seems to have lost. May be its just me and my rubbish post processing , but seems to have lost a bit of punch

Of course Judith, feel free it will be my pleasure

Thank you Judith, he is a sweet boy, actually not too demanding.

Bob
have a read on this thread, there were some great tips when I asked more or less the same question a few months ago link

I am sorry if this has been debated before but I did a quick search and I can't find anything regarding this particular issue.
I just stumbled upon this by chance while opening raw files with CS4 and noticed that it softens slightly the images when converted to jpg. I played with the settings but can't find anything that would allow me to convert from RAW to jpg without the image suffering that minute but still noticeable softening. How did I notice this? Because I usually open all my images with FastStone initially, courtesy of some very kind members who steered me towards this method, and suddenly with this particular image when I open 100% in FastStone the difference is astounding compared to the CS4 RAW editor.

Whether the CS4 is just applying Noise reduction or anything else I am nto aware. I pulled the sharpening pointers and the luminance all to "0", tried "Image Settings", Camera Raw Defaults... etc from the small drop down menu, but still I can see the big difference on this particular image.

Am I missing something here? I haven't tried another RAW converter but I will go and try Silkipix now and see if the jpg image ends up the same as the CS4, but certainly the FastStone image has the absolute crispier image when opened there.

Any help please would be much appreciated

Thanks

Amin

I have a little suspicion that if he has inherited his mum's business sense he is bound to follow P, simply because he would have inherited all the gear from the dad and will be saving a lot of dosh. Mum is very stingy shhhh keep it quiet or else I will be in trouble lol

Richard thats so helpful what you just mentioned. I find it very interesting because you just mention something that is high in my priorities, which is being able to take out the camera very quickly. When I am running and suddenly stop and want to capture something the last thing I need is something that is a bit messy to open and remove the camera. I am definitely looking for the easiest bag to perform these duties, of course being able to carry on my back comfortably also as a priority. I thought nothing beat Kata 3N1 series in these aspects, due to the versatility of it in the ways I can carry it, right shoulder, left shoulder, as a backpack and also with the belts crossed on the chest. But I thought also that it had one of the easiest means of taking out the camera by just twisting it to the front, while being carried. But now you just reminded me that that shifting position from the back to the waist and removing the camera can only be done if the bag is carried on one strap either left shoulder or right shoulder if I am not mistaken.
I definitely got to go and check the Lowepro flipside 300 then and compare it also for the comfort and easy of these aspects.
And as you mention having the kata 3N1 on you and the lowepro as well, seems you already have the full experience on this.
This is very helpful indeed, I had totally written off the Lowepro without giving it full thought but now I will go and check this out too.

Thanks