Rob was refering to the 55-300mm, which has an aperture range of 4-5.8, so at 55mm and f/5.6, you wouldn't be wide open, as wide open is f/4.

Drew, those of us who bothered travelling to Watford earlier in the month (didn't see you there ) had a play with one - seemed quite nice to me, but I was more interested in the DA* 300mm, so didn't take more than a minute or two to have a quick play.

Mongoose and Reuben both liked it, there's a couple of comments about it on this thread: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7101&postdays=0&postord... (just ignore all the nits about mugs and mouse mats ).

Dan

...and because the rules are slightly stricter now in that you can't change a photo once you've entered it.

Dan

I always used to use dlab7.com, which was part of the 7dayshop group. Don't know if they still do 120 processing. You could buy the film and processing, hang on, I'll have a look...

Film here: http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_1&products_id=102...

Processing here: http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_1&products_id=690...

Multipacks of both available.

Dan

And I doubt you'll notice much, if any, difference between 10 and 12, but it's up to you really. Perhaps you could put the note 'Large Image' in the title of the post so that those who don't want to wait don't view your post. Of course, they can always click the 'back' button if it's taking too long.

I do agree perhaps this image was a little wide to post here, not many people have a 2000 pixel wide monitor.

Dan

Well, sorry but I didn't realise, as from your original posts it didn't seem as though either you or John did. Dpi is not relevant to web images, ppi has no effect on file size, as shown in my example above.

Okay, well I didn't check on this particular image, it's probably safe to say it takes a long time to download because of its pixel dimensions. It's definitely not because of the ppi setting.

Perhaps Rob uses this quality setting on many of his pics, I don't know. I tend to use between 4 and 7, but try to keep the file size to around 100Kb, but sometimes it's more if the detail warrants it. Rob's just tend to be a lot more, so I would assume he generally uses a higher quality level.

Dan

No problem Rob, when I did one of my first panoramas (back when I was scanning film to do them) I thought I'd done a great job, until about a week later I notice a tree which had a trunk that didn't match top to bottom. So easily done as you're staring at the pic for so long you start to miss bits.

I got some shots of these turbines back in the Autumn when I visited Formby Point to see the squirrels, not as good as this one though.

Dan

There's a difference between dpi and ppi.

Dpi is 'dots per inch' and it's used when talking about printing resolution. An inkjet printer might have a resolution of 1200dpi, and this is how many individual dots of ink it can lay down per inch. Magazines and books are usually printed at around 300dpi.

Ppi is pixels per inch, and this refers to the image resolution when printed. In theory, the higher the ppi, the more detail can be shown, although this reaches its limit at around 300ppi.

If you have an image that is 1800 x 1200, and you print it at 300ppi the image would be 6" x 4". If you printed it at 100ppi it would be 18" x 12", but lower resolution, and could show pixelation. However, whatever the ppi was set to, when this image is shown full size on screen, it would always be the same size. If you save it at 300ppi, the monitor does not throw away unused pixels to show it at 72ppi, it simply shows it pixel per pixel. The resolution setting makes no difference.

Try it. Save the same image at different resolutions, but with the same pixel dimensions, then view it in a web page, it'll be the same size every time.

Rob's images are larger in file size (i.e. 400Kb, rather than 100Kb), because he'll choose Quality level 11 or 12 when saving the jpeg, rather than perhaps 6 or 7 or whatever.

Actually, here's a couple of demos:



300ppi



72ppi



Quality Level 12 - 231Kb



Quality Level 2 - 45.8Kb

They're all the same size on screen, but the first two have different ppi settings. The second two are saved at different quality levels, and the first one has more detail.

Dan

300ppi and 72ppi are exactly the same when shown full size on screen, it's just that Rob tends to save his images at a higher quality level to preserve detail, so one of his 'normal' sized photos (say 800 x 530 pixels) might be 400kb, instead of 100kb someone else might save it at.

Of course, this panoramic is nearly 2000 x 600 pixels, and over 1.1Mb, so that's why it takes a while. But it wouldn't be any different if it were 300ppi or 72ppi.

Rob, I love the sky, and the sweep of the channel in the foreground, but there are a couple of bits (apart from that pipe) that spoil it a bit. When doing a panoramic like this, there's so much work going into it it's easy to miss bits.

First, there's a dust spot that shows up at least three times, near the top of the image. Secondly, there an odd bit in the sky just to the left and above the lefthand wind turbine. Lastly, there's a wobbly bit of horizon to the right of the turbines, and when you look down the picture from there, you can see the join's not so good here, unfortunately the pipe's practically pointing at it.

Overall it's a nice shot, but I'm sure you want to get it as good as you can, so hopefully won't mind me pointing these out.

Dan

Ah, just posted there, and as you'll see, I've already got 3 sets (including the same as yours).

So no, sorry.

Dan

Well I've an eyecup and a strap, not necessarily the ones that came with it (I got it secondhand about 4 years ago), but they would be Pentax ones. I much prefer this sort of eyecup, so that's why there's not one shown on the pics - I obviously took the other one off and put it somewhere safe. I've got one off my K10D that's mint.

Likewise the strap would be from either the *istD or the K10D (don't like/use them either).

I don't have a case, but I don't suppose this was standard issue, was it?

If you're intersted, send me a PM with an offer and we can start the haggling.

Cheers,
Dan