I have to admit to having used sunrise calcs before, especially when planning photographic opportunities around A2 meets - if I know where the sun is coming from, then I can work out where to stand to avoid shooting into the sunlight.

Bret

niinpä.

I also figured which was which on the shots without checking the EXIF, but only because I understand the differences and they're right next to one another. I like the seventies feel (mild sepia tone, muted colours) of the older lens.

BRet

No. Because you're only sharpening edges, giving better definition, without emphasising noise. I might try it on a couple later and show 100% crops.

Bret

1 needs to be done at sunrise IMO.

Bret

hmm. Sounds magnificent. And dodgy as hell.

Bret

USM is too obvious for me in many cases, I prefer something else....

- Take the original
- duplicate twice.
- on one, edge-detect and then convert to black and white.
- using the color levels, remove the grey (shift the black point up and the white point down) until you've got what could be a chalk drawing of the scene
- now gaussian blur it - somewhere between 4 and 10 pix works well for me
- Now select the entire pic.

On the second duplicate:
- decompose to LAB or HSV. If you're using LAB, sharpen L; if it's HSV, then V. I'll use L in the next section, as that's the way I do it.
- Select the pic.
- create a new channel. Name it "sharpmask" or similar
- make sure new channel is selected, not the pic and not the layers, and then paste. In GIMP, at this point you'd have to Anchor the layer.
- now go back to the channels and convert the channel to a selection.
- with the L layer selected, use USM. You can go pretty strong - 5, 1.0, 0 - and it will only sharpen the edges and pale sections of the pic.
It's these that give the "illusion" of sharpness, even if it's not perfect. It's especially obvious in small prints (up to around A4), because you're looking at them from a bit further away and so your brain fills in the other bits, even if it's not 100%.

I also tend to do any denoising heavily on the duplicate that will be the mask and more delicately on the other; that way, the mask is slightly larger (which you can influence with the gaussian blur) and the noise is not amplified.
That's the other reason you shouldn't try sharpening blue channels, as they get more noise - the luminosity is also really obvious.

Takes around 30min per pic on my T60, this machine is around 3 minutes.

Bret

keepers: 10-30%, depending. Under 10 usually means I wasn't sure how to do it.

Bret

@MikeW: I *could* do a three course on an open fire if you want (bacon and garlic twisties, steak with potatoes & goat cheese parcels and then pancakes or baked bananas), but I'll need at least two hours and a decent pile of dry firewood, preferably birch and pine. The old summer house had no 'leccy or gas, so there's not much choice....and it means I got a lot of practice

@whelmed: as far as etiquette is concerned, Martin already said it all. I must have read 10-15 threads on different forums recently with guys fawning over gear and believing it would make them a commercially viable 'tog.
I personally prefer - and would recommend - hitting the limits of the kit you have and then deciding what to do next. This also reduces expensive forays into nice lenses which keep value reasonably well but also tie up significant capital.

Bret

I'd place the 28-70 around the £50 mark. A 1.4 /50 should be around the same, no?
The cokin set depends on the filters and the size of them: if they're the big ones they'll be worth more.

Bret

An opinion: a lens will not make or break a shot. If you're aware of what they do, then you can play to their strengths. That's part of the art.

The thing that will sell a shot or not is lighting. And that's the *really* difficult bit.

The "suddenly" is that pretty much every other thread at the moment seems concerned with the ability to make money out of a hobby....

Bret