I like the second one much, much more.

Notwithstanding those that liked the white before, I think the detail is much clearer in the second one, both in the centre of the foreground one, and its petals.

There's also enough in focus in the background one to maintain interest - I find my eyes flitting from foreground to background.

And then when I finally rest on the centre of the foreground one, it's satisfyingly sharp, and I can enjoy the detail.

I find I'm liking the composition now, too.

Thanks for taking the trouble to reshoot. You've also reinforced my self-confidence in appraising photos, which may or may not, of course, be a good thing...

Thanks. I know technically an apology isn't necessary.. but I never enjoy raining on people's parade. And when everyone else is saying 'top notch', and 'superb', and I'm going... 'huh?', I usually assume I'm missing something - especially amongst the company here.

Usually I can see why people think something's good, even if I don't like it... so if others think there's merit that I can't see, in something, then I have the opportunity to learn something. So thanks for the elaboration.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but, erm, from those that like it...

... exactly why do you think the composition is good?

The centre of the foreground orchid doesn't look too sharp to me, and the OOF background one has the edge-on petal quite sharp, so for me it's a distraction.

I don't really understand the point of the way it's cropped, either.

It doesn't do much for me, sorry..

But I'd like to know why people think it's good.

Surely changing cards once in the course of 500 shots isn't too onerous?

If it is, you can get 8Gb cards.

The drawback, of course, that if an appreciable proportion of those 500 shots are worth keeping, there's a lot of RAW-JPEG conversion needed for whatever you do with them afterwards.

If you're going to do this, you'll need a decent batch converter.

I haven't seen this either, in 18 months, and the camera's been in P mode, switched on but asleep, for at least a third of its life.

It would help us to help you, you know, if you gave us a lot more information about how you've got the camera set up.

Often, even looking to see how you've set it will prompt you to realise what you've done.

Could be dark, could be a low-contrast subject, could be in AF.C, so focus moving about all the time, could be dirty contacts...

There's almost always a list of things it could be... and if you could narrow it down we'd need to use our mind-reading skills a bit less.

You have a K100D, right?

Manual, page 47.

Set the camera to MF.

As it says on page 125:

"The shutter cannot be released until the subject is in focus in AF.S"

So even if you had focus confirmation, you've probably moved the camera. Focus confirmation can be very touchy - it only takes a small movement, and it no longer thinks it's in focus.

It's possible that you're mistaking a shallow depth of field for not being in focus, since with a lens with as wide an aperture as F1.7, it won't be sharp over much of a distance close up.

But apart from this, manual focus takes practice if you're not used to it, in which case the AF is likely to be a lot better at focusing than you are.

Or was it your less attractive twin brother in the shop again...

This is him, isn't it?

I'm hoping to steal my dad's K10D as well, and have a 400mm on that.

Ta for the advice

I can see I'm going to have to buy a 55-300 before Farnborough, at this rate...