I can't speak for people with glasses, of course, although I struggle to take pictures with sunglasses on.

My situation was that I thought that my VF was already adjusted correctly - because everything was perfectly sharp when the image was in focus.

I'd just encourage people to check - since for me at least, a small adjustment has had a very welcome and unexpected side effect.

I've just discovered something that has made my manual focusing a lot quicker, so I thought I'd share it.

I'm lucky enough to have good uncorrected eyesight, and looking through the viewfinder, everything in focus has always looked good and sharp. However, I was idly playing about with the camera just now, as one does, and it happens to have a MF lens on the front of it. I noticed that although the viewfinder image was sharp, my eye didn't feel as relaxed as it might (it felt as if it was working to focus, as it were), so it occurred to me that I might have accidentally moved the dioptre adjustment.

So I adjusted it, and sure enough, I could then see the viewfinder image sharp, with my eye relaxed - focused wherever it does when relaxed.

Now, all this isn't very interesting so far - the number of people wandering around with wrongly adjusted viewfinders must be legion, and I was just one of them.

However, what I then noticed, was that I can now focus manually, and get focus confirmation much, much quicker than before.

Before, it was "turn the ring, looks sharp, no confirmation, turn it backwards and forwards, eventually get confirmation, recheck image, yes, still looks sharp". It always annoyed me, but I put it down to the lack of old-style split-prism focusing.

Now it's "turn the ring, looks sharp, focus confirmation comes up". No messing.

So, why?

I reckon that while my dioptre was set wrong, it wasn't wrong enough to stop my eye being able to focus on the viewfinder image.

So with an AF lens on the front, it would focus, and I would then see the image sharp. I'd only have to look at it for a moment, and then I'd take the picture. So I wouldn't notice the effort my eye was having to go to.

With a MF lens on the front, though, it starts off not sharp, and my eye would be try to focus... meanwhile, I'd be turning the focus ring, and that would change what my eye was trying to focus on. This iteration would eventually stop when the lens and my eye were both correctly focused. But it took an annoyingly long time.

Presumably with the dioptre adjusted right, the effort required by my eye is less, so the iteration is much quicker.

It's certainly a dramatic improvement.

I'd be interested if anyone else finds a similar improvement, if they discover that their dioptre is set wrong - not by much, but enough to require the eye to work a bit, to get its own AF lock .

Well, he did say "out of camera".

I've never done it myself, but from the manual it appears that RAW-JPG conversion in-the-camera can be done only one frame at a time, unless I've read it wrong.

I can imagine this might be a bit of a faff, if there are a number of them.

I think what he must mean, given that he said "convert DNG to JPG", is that mostly he's continuing to shoot in JPG, but switches to DNG occasionally, using this converter to make it into a JPG later.

I agree with you, though - I use RAW+ much more often than I ever expected to.

If he really doesn't want to go to bigger SD cards, but wants to save space, then I'd suggest continuing to shoot mostly in JPG, but use PEF (significantly smaller than DNG) for the occasional RAW shot.

Then use Picasa to convert the PEFs to JPG - it's also free, very easy to use, and lets you do some basic editing too.

Thank you.

Why have you deleted my entire post, John, (which only reported the veiled use of offensive language) while leaving the one behind -section deleted by moderator -

It has also changed the entire sense of the exchange, which is still left for all to see.

By moderating thus, you are effectively saying that the language used earlier (which was very offensive to me), is acceptable on this forum, whereas my reporting it is not.

This seems very partisan to me.

I'm not sure quite how to respond further. Perhaps you would.

You're right, and for this, I apologise.

Since when was it acceptable for people to make threatening comments like this?

I have offered an example of why I hold an opinion I've expressed before, regarding captions for competition photographs.

If you feel that my comment is likely to unreasonably bias the competition judge against your entry, then I unreservedly apologise, and withdraw my reference to the composition of your photograph.

My opinion of captions, however, stands, and until a moderator objects to my expressing it, I won't be intimidated from expressing it by veiled threats.

Regarding...

This is a classic example of why I don't like captions for competition photos.

The caption betrays a very subjective objection to whatever bigotry that guy is apparently guilty of (I have no idea, myself, what it's about, and the caption makes it no clearer to me).

Without the caption, and the background knowledge that makes sense of the context, this is just another snap of some bloke with the top of his head chopped off.

Personally, I think captions should be against the rules, and the photos should be judged on their own, in the context of the competition theme.

Yes, this rings a bell.
Hmm, possibly so. You could just about get the sky that blue on a very good day, and sometimes you might get leaves glowing like that if enough light from out of shot was shining through them. But I do take your point.
Yes, I liked it too. It's the most natural HDR shot I've seen posted here.