It does sound poor, the way you describe it, and since I wasn't involved I'm not, of course, challenging your account of the situation.

But I have to say, the feedback that appears to be from you, reads (to me) somewhat more aggressively than you imply here, and does not refer to the item being fine.

I say this purely because we can sometimes have such different perceptions of the same situations.

I've been dealing on eBay on and off now, for some months, and I can see there are a lot of potential pitfalls.

I recently bought an FA 80-320, which turned out to be cosmetically not as good as advertised. I was offered a return or a partial refund, and we negotiated a partial refund. Then I had the chance to check it out optically, and had cause for concern. So I asked him if, after all, I could return it. He was quite sniffy about it, but agreed. I'd paid the postage both ways of course.

On reflection, I came to the conclusion that if I gave him the benefit of the doubt, his view of the cosmetics could be described as different from mine, and that he wasn't necessarily a lying cheat. So on the basis that at least he did the refund promptly, I gave him some positive feedback, hoping for some in return, given that it was a reasonably amicable agreement despite both of us being quite disappointed. However, there's been nothing, and I suppose I should be glad that he didn't give me negative. He still could, I suppose.

I've come to the conclusion that the feedback system is wide open to abuse, and that anyone who deserves negative, will probably give it, purely to retaliate. I'm trying to find better ways of reading between the lines in the listings - in retrospect this one wasn't hard to spot.

If anyone's looking for an FA 80-320, by the way, and wants to check up on one that's listed in the near future, in case it's the one I rejected, I took some pictures before it went back

I do very much agree with this.

There is another photography forum where most of the 'critique' consists of little more than 'nice shot', and it drives me mad. I've finally managed to stop reading it, and even deleted my internet browser bookmark to the site.

If you look back through the thread, you'll notice that I didn't at all criticise you for pointing out the lack of realism in Brian's entry. It was very valid to point it out, and if realism had been an explicit criterion by which entries were to be judged, then I'd agree that the lighting should be noted as a mistake.

However, there was no rule that said that any composite would be judged according to its realism. Therefore no rule was broken, and as John pointed out, there are other things which are attractive about the entry, so he was within his rights to grade it how he pleased.

So in summary:

I'm not at all disagreeing with the offering and receiving of critique, and the more honest and specific the critique, the better.

If I'd been judging the competition, my criteria might well have been different from John's, since I value realism very highly. However, I wasn't, so I don't agree with suggestions that Brian's entry should have been marked down, based on imaginary rules that weren't specified in the competition.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the human landscape?

The thing is, as soon as you allow composite images at all, this can of worms isn't just opened, it's opened, and the worms thrown all over the ground. I was being flippant earlier with my comment about the floodlight, but actually I think it's a very serious point.

I simply don't see that if you allow fakery at all, one type of fakery is any better than another, just because (due to the absence of obvious mistakes), it's harder to detect as a fake.

A fake sky is not real. One that's been faked more cleverly isn't any more real, just because it could have been.

I recall a shot posted here some time ago where the clouds had a ton of visual impact, but they were completely unreal, since clouds like that would have been accompanied by a lot more wind, which would have whipped up the water. Which was calm. I happened to notice it simply because I have reason to be interested in the weather a little. I posted an aeroplane picture, and someone suggested that I turn it round to improve the effect. Had I done so, its control surfaces would have been completely wrong for the manoeuvre it was doing.

All of this is just a matter of degree, and the more specialist knowledge you have, the more fakes you will spot. It's not how good they are, to my mind, it's the fact that they're fakes at all.

That said, there's nothing wrong with a competition to see who can create the most apparently real fakes. It's a real skill, and those who are good at it should be recognised for that skill. There's also nothing wrong with a competition that says "there are no rules, the judge's decision is not only final, but doesn't have to be justified".

So I think it's wrong to criticise either Brian (for entering it) or John (for rewarding it) because the competition is in the latter category. You may not like it, but you don't have to enter it.

Personally, I'd like to see the winner of each competition specify not only the theme, but the rules as well. Then we'd have some rule-free comps, which are great, and some comps with rules too, which would also be great, but for different reasons.

Personally, I think it's a bit bizarre applying this sort of "is this realistic" evaluation to a composite in the first place. Why on earth should a composite look "realistic"?

In any case, you're completely wrong, it's not a composite at all, is it, Brian?

Any fool can see that the sun is setting behind the hill, as shown, and there's a socking great multi-kilowatt floodlight, out of frame to the left, behind the camera. I expect Brian felt that the foreground needed something to bring out the detail.

What's wrong with that, anyway? We think fill-in flash for back-lit portraits is ok.

The two separate shots are just a red-herring, cunningly designed to put us off the scent.

I think you'd find the same thing in most countries. We all make selections - what pictures we take and show - and you've probably seen more "pretty UK countryside" pictures than "run-down UK inner city" shots.

It did occur to me after I posted, that perhaps I should have said:

"not to mention the beautiful views of your country you give us…", which is not quite the same.

Everywhere looks better from the air though.

Not quite.

Some of the brackets have tripod adapters, some have shoe adapters. So you need to be careful what you get in the way of connectors.

To keep all the P-TTL, the bits you need to do it with wires if the bracket has a tripod adapter are:

- sync cord 5P
- hot shoe adapter Fg
- off-camera adapter F

The hot shoe adapter Fg also allows the built in to pop up properly. The off-camera adapter F has a tripod socket on the bottom, so the flash brackets that just have a hot shoe adapter won't quite do the trick. For these you'd need the hot shoe adapter F.

Look carefully before deciding what you really want. I have to be quite sober before I can remember the difference between all the bits, and I ended up with an extra wire and the hot shoe adapter F from eBay when I found them going for a song.

New, they're expensive. About £100 to get the wire with a plug on each end. Shocking, really.

They do work well though. AFAICT, you get all the facilities of the flash on the hot shoe, just on the end of the wire.

I noticed that too.

The "pre-flash blink" that you get with younger people and animals really is a right royal pain in the bum, I've noticed.

So I can see A-mode being very handy, if not quite as convenient as P-TTL.

The 48 is a lot cheaper than the 58, but I'd steer clear of it for that deficiency alone, if it's true. I had a brief search when I saw that comment, but couldn't find anything.

And probably a lot easier to get hold of than the Samsung 540 (my order at Amazon only took 3 months to fulfil!)

I wonder how well the Metz works with the 540.

Just to reiterate JustGetOutAndRide's (and others') point, I wasn't remotely criticising Dirk's use of language either, just musing on what seemed an interesting (to me at least) linguistic point.

Please, Dirk, don't feel the need to apologise. You express yourself excellently, and given how difficult that can be in a foreign language, not to mention the views of your beautiful country you give us, I think we're honoured to have you here.