Quite. Seems a bit dodgy to me.

@ Mark: Are you completely certain it wasn't some gunk you'd managed to get on your AB before attempting the clean, that then got spread over the sensor?

AIUI, it's quite easy to do that, especially if the AB has previously been used on something sticky. Of course, you can't discover that the dust is really sticky pollen until you try the AB and it doesn't work. Then it's too late!

Fascinating. No Pentax images there, though, is this allowed?

What's this about, then?

Has anyone else come across this?

Here are a few versions of a picture I've applied different lightening effects to. I've done nothing other than what's stated, apart from resizing to a height of 600 px.

Here's the original - just opened from ACR with no changes:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-orig.jpg[/IMG]

Next, Fill Light to 80%:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-FL80.jpg[/IMG]

Shadows adjustment (Amount 60, Tonal width 28, Radius 30):

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-shad-602830.jpg[/IMG]

And finally levels adjustment. Since on the histogram, the bright window is a bump at the extreme right hand end, I moved the middle slider down to the right hand edge of the big bump corresponding to the dark area at the left hand end of the histogram.

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-lvls-mid.jpg[/IMG]

Of the three edits, the Fill Light version is the most realistic, closely followed by the Levels version - based on my memory of the scene. I was in Edinburgh on Tuesday - this is the interior of St Giles cathedral on the Royal Mile.

If anyone is interested enough to play with the DNG themselves, let me know and I'll put it online somewhere.

It's available with Elements 9, too. Version 6.4.1.

On the K10D you can lock the mirror up and watch the sensor flopping about! Probably can with the K-5 too, at a guess.

... and how does it differ from the 'shadows' bit of Shadows/Highlights?

I mean, I can see that they both make the dark bits lighter.

But 'fill light' seems to work a lot better on very underexposed areas, in the sense that the result isn't as unnatural.

I'll post a couple of examples when I get a sec, but in the meantime I'm interested in what the controls actually do.

I don't think that's necessary. If you can articulate why you don't like it, the things you'd rather were different will be apparent.

If the reason you like it isn't apparent to other people, that's all the more reason to say why you do. Then other people might see what you're seeing, and be enriched as a result.

It's people claiming that they themselves don't know / can't describe / what it is they like or don't like about a shot, that's the real issue.

To me that just says they can't be bothered.

I'm as much against vacuous non-specific comments as anyone else, and probably more so than many.

However, I don't much like the idea of people having to justify their qualification to offer critique.

AFAIC, the only qualification required to comment on a photo is to have an opinion, and to be prepared to articulate it. If someone then doesn't like that opinion, they have the freedom to ignore it.

To suggest that people have to somehow demonstrate their qualification, before their view becomes acceptable, makes no sense to me on two counts:

One is obvious - you don't have to be a chicken to know that an egg's bad. I hate my own photos most of all, since most of them are rubbish and I know perfectly well why. If I don't post them, does that make me less qualified to comment on others'?

The other is perhaps less obvious: if someone is incapable of evaluating someone's critique of their image without first believing that the critic is somehow qualified, that critique is worthless. By which I mean, that if you can judge the critic, you can probably judge your own photos at least as well as your critic can.

Personally, I'm just as interested in hearing a child's opinion of my pictures as I am a pro's. They'll see different things, and I can choose to agree or disagree with either.

Well the things that got me looking at Pentax digital at all was 10 MP instead of 6, weather sealing, shake reduction, and bigger viewfinder and LCD. I think sensitivity priority also came out with the K10D, but I'm not sure about that.