Me too. Got them from cameraclean.co.uk.

Not cheap, but it shifted a lot of horrible oily particles that the Arctic Butterfly didn't touch.

I'm wondering about the dynamic range figures there.

Comparing the K10D, the K7 and the K5, it appears the K7 has a stop *less* than the K10D.

Is that credible?

If so, the K5 has 3.5 stops greater dynamic range than the K7, and 2.5 more than the K10D.

I must say, if the 2.5 stop increment over the K10D is real, it goes quite a long way towards addressing one of the main things on my gripe list with the K10D.

Can't comment on Linux/Mac stability, but using Win7 x64 10+ hours a day, I'd agree that it's good. Loving the UI compared with XP.

However, at risk of going way off topic and not pouring petrol on the Mac vs PC flame wars, there's one huge caveat...

Be very careful if you're doing all the following:

- running Win7 x64
- doing .NET development using Visual Studio 2010
- targeting x86 platforms
- compiling for .NET 3.5

PM me if you need the details, but it's a disaster of gargantuan proportions, so much so that I'm now doing all my development on a Win7 x86 virtual machine, inside the x64 host.

... and seriously considering going back to 32 bit Win7.

____

Edit... and back on a photography theme, it also took some serious hacking to get my Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED to work on x64. No credit to me, except for Googling, nor to Nikon for not being ***ed to keep their drivers up to date.

Brian, I'm a little troubled.. there's something that strikes me as not quite right about the first one.

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/mcb1-1.jpg[/IMG]

The skin tone around the jaw line seems a little strange.

Could you elaborate? Is it a bit of PP gone a bit awry? A bit of lighting not quite right?

Either way, it's something of a distraction. The pose (especially the offset angle of her head) looks a touch forced to me, too, so I'm afraid I'm not really taken by the first.

The second is just delicious though (edit: bright or muted).

If I was going to be picky about the second one, I'd suggest the eyes aren't quite as sharp as the lips. You can force that, though, in this case, by adding a layer just for the eyes and applying some extreme USM to it, adjusting the overlay percentage till it looks Ok.

Edit: actually, on reflection, I think the shininess of the lips make them look sharper than they are. Shine is often easily confused with sharp, it seems to me, which is what gives the lips their undeserved dominance in this case. I think you could still beef up the apparent sharpness of the eyes and get away with it.

I think the subtleties of her expression make the second one worth any amount of PP effort.

Yes, I can see that would be good.

It always surprises me how quickly I can find things using the sequential scrolling method.

I can usually find things in less time than it would take to think about (let alone type in) which tag to use - simply because visual recognition is so quick.

I scroll through the folders first, and the screenfull of thumbnails that flashes up briefly for each one usually triggers enough in the way of memory to zero in very quickly.

My folders are all named as the date they came off the card, not the shot date.

I use Picasa to import them (creates the subfolder automatically), and also to view them.

I don't tag any photos at all - I figure that knowing the approximate date will get me close enough, and then scrolling through the pictures (Picasa is lightning quick at this) will let me find what I'm looking for.

Admittedly, it doesn't let me find pictures of Fiona, but the time I'd have to spend laboriously multi-tagging images, far, far outweighs the time I occsasionally spend looking for things.

Awwww... don't you just want to give her a cuddle! She has a slightly lost look about her that is very endearing.

Welcome. There are some nice pictures in there; I like the alien mothership in particular.

If you're after detailed critique, though, you might consider posting just one or two images as described in John Riley's post here.

That way, you're more likely to get specific, detailed suggestions.

It's just not practical to write a critique of nearly 70 photos. You might get something along the lines of "nice shots", but that won't really help you much.

Damn and blast... you beat me to it. I hadn't seen this when I posted this.

But it's 'Coltrane'

I loved that series. Completely predictable in every respect, utterly silly, and it had Catherine Bach. The movie was dreadful in comparison.

Or indeed, with extreme wide angle lenses.