Matt,

Tried the colour punch, it works a treat! Respect!

Yes but... there was a tad more detail in the swan's feathers in the "underexposed" version. All-white subjects like swans and snow are darned difficult to get get right. Nic pic Liam.

Fernando,

I have the same 70 - 300 mm APO sigma lens as Mannesty. The following is not cropped from the original 300mm, 1/180 @ F8 ISO400, I hope it gives you an indication of what you might expect to get magnification-wise.




This photographers' eyes could do with a bit of focussing, as I didn't quite get the bell of the snowpdrop in sharp focus, but the stem! It was handheld (braced against the bench I was sitting on) and slightly breezy.

I have had good experiences with using both extension tubes and reversing the lens onto the body with an adapter, but at the very close lens to subject distance, most wildlife would be far too shy to hang around! Also focussing becomes a problem, so I use a manfrotto micropositioning plate i picked up on ebay. Some samples of images taken with this rig are here http://www.ammonyte.plus.com/galleries/ExtensionTubes/index.html If you like lots of fiddling and tinkering, macro photography can be a heap of fun!

If anyone has some spare cash after a lens buying spree you could try this http://www.masterofmalt.co.uk/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=1410 One time they were selling a particularly rare vitage for £4,995 per bottle! (no i didn't buy a bottle either!)

I'd like to submit a vote for Talisker from the Isles and Edradour from the highlands.

Oh, and Caol Ila and Highland Park.

Slainte Mhor!

Thanks guys, the flavour of this particular duck I cannot vouch for!

Well after following advice (so blame Matt!) I scrubbed my monitor out, set up the colour profiles and re-processed the images. I think the advantage of using the "correct" colour profiles comes out best in the images of the drake.

Before




After




The rest (if you can still be bothered!) are at http://www.ammonyte.plus.com/galleries/showcase/index.html

Thanks again to Matt, Don and John for enlightening me.

Thanks for the tips guys, there's enough fettling there to keep me out of trouble for a few hours! I'll try Matts' tips then go back to the RAW files and do some new processing. I may just add them to the gallery for a before and after comparison.


Thinking about it afterwards, the clue was in the camera much of the time - the camera is set to use sRGB, ergo, continue to use sRGB. Doh!!

I'm a bit hazy as to exactly what colo(u)r profiles do.

My assumption (please correct me) is that a monitor cannot display colours the way that they will appear on a print, and that the colour profiles adjust the monitors rendering of colour so that it (should) match the print out.

My monitor is a Dell M911 (a CRT) on an NVIDIA GEFORCE2 MX/MX400 video card, and in Rawshooter I have been using the Dell M991 working space and setting the camera profile to "Pentax *ist DS | ETC-V100" (one of the color engine addons).

In APSE the options are only SRGB or Adobe RGB. Most of the time I am pushed to see any differences; the main change came when I removed the profile from the Newlands corner sunset picture, which brought up the reds and oranges more.

I bet you'll telll me now that there was a whole thread devoted to this issue a while back!

George,

You just put your finger on one of my problems. I shoot in RAW and process with Rawshooter Premium, and they do look punchy. But something goes wonko in the conversion to JPG or TIF. I usually convert to TIF first for final fettling in Photoshop Elements, then convert to JPG only those pictures for web or email. (And I try and keep JPG at "max quality" unless there is a compelling reason for a smaller file size)

Perhaps some clever members have some tips for keeping the JPG and TIF files from losing their "bite" please?