Yeah, there are some odd sorts about!

Anyway, good plants for attracting bees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths include:

Buddleia
Verbena bonariensis (I think that's how you spell it )
Fennel (we have a bronze fennel, absolutely smothered in hoverflies and wasps at the moment, but does self-seed very readily, need to keep it in check)
Sunflower
Foxglove


There are plenty of books around which will tell you the best plants to have - Chris Baines wrote the definitive wildlife gardening book, but there are many others, including several in association with the ublications:books" rel="nofollow" class="outlink" target="blank">Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

Cheers,
Dan

Hi I.S.,

I'm guessing that you have PKA extension tubes (with the electrical contacts), as opposed to PK ones that have no contacts, just the aperture lever thing, otherwise there's no way the camera would know the aperture for the EXIF data. So I'm also guessing that the camera would need one particular contact to read the aperture for display, and presumably setting it from the body, but perhaps a different one would give info back to the camera??

I've noticed that some lenses have more contacts than others, but I don't know what these contacts do. However, I can guarantee someone here does, so I'm sure you'll get a proper answer in due course.

I can't imagine it's a fault with the camera, if it was the same with the MZ's. The only difference now is that you can see the aperture in the EXIF data, so you know there's some sort of communication going on.

But why did it take you so long to try macro with your D???

All the best,
Dan

Welcome too! Hope you find answers to questions, and raise a few yourself - as JC says, we're all friendly here, and everyone knows something about something.

My first Pentax was an MZ-5N, bought as a backup body for my, er, Chinon CE5 (Nice little camera, did the job etc, good comeback to the perennial comment "you must have a really good camera" - "Well, it's a Chinon, Dixons own brand" - "Oh!"**)

The 5N's still in my camera bag, just one roll through it in 18 months since I got my D.

As you say, best thing I ever did.

All the best,
Dan

** The only time that question really annoyed me was when it was asked by a painter, and I came back with the "and you must use fantastic brushes" line, but he didn't understand what I was getting at. Probably because he did use fantastic brushes.

Interesting contraption, no reason why it wouldn't work, although as the auther states, it would just be for one camera/lens combination (but then I always use my 50mm lens when doing panoramics). You could easily adapt it for different lenses by having differently spaced holes in the 'arm', one for each lens that you wanted to use, as long as you labeled them well.

One thing I noticed seemed wrong, was on 'Page 4', the distance from the central hole to the side, should surely be "Measure the height from the table to the center of the lens" plus the thickness (depth) of the 'arm'. I can't see that it would be right otherwise.

And, as you say Don, some sort of angle markings would be useful.

Anyway, an interesting project...

Cheers,
Dan

Matt,

Please keep us posted with your 'very nice news'; having just got C1 LE, I'm adjusting contrast and saturation at the moment (still playing), but a profile with a bit more 'oomph' would be nice.

Oh, and if you've got that link to the B&W profile, that would be nice.

Cheers,
Dan

What about if you put the bee in the fridge, but when you went to get it out, you couldn't find it?

And you wouldn't be able to leave the light on for it, what if it's afraid of the dark?

Dan

JC, it hasn't really answered your question though, has it?

I would guess that a quick chill in the fridge would be safer for the insect, as this is a natural thing that would happen overnight. I don't know how long you'd need to keep them in there for. It does get some bad press though, bit like shots of caged animals as opposed to wild ones. I guess it depends on the subject, and how likely you are to get a shot of it in it's natural surroundings.

I think you get more of a thrill and sense of achievement if you get 'untamed' animal shots. Today I managed to get a Red Admiral butterfly to crawl onto my hand (would've taken a photo instead but the camera was back in the office ), simply by moving very slowly while it was basking in the sun. Sometimes it works, sometimes (most times ) it doesn't, but it makes it all the more special when it does.

Have fun,
Dan

I prefer the 'approach very carefully' method!

Where's the thrill of the chase if the thing can't move?

Dan

Hi Liam,

I think you're getting confused between system RAM and Video RAM. The system RAM is used for the processing of the image, i.e. opening the file, storing it in memory, etc. I have 1Gb of this memory, and can open and manipulate panoramic images of 13,000 x 2,700 pixels without too much bother.

Video RAM is used to store the actual screen image, which for a 1024x768 resolution, at 32bit colour, is about 3Mb. Allowing the card to have one 'screen' in memory while loading a new one, means that a card with 8Mb of RAM should be fine for 2D work. More memory and video processing power is needed for 3D work, such as video games where different textures, shading etc is done by the video card.

When I used PE2, I had absolutely no problem with the display, so the card I have at the moment was capable of handling the redrawing of the screen, it's only since I've upgraded to PE4 that I've noticed the slow down. Presumably this means PE4 places a different sort of load on the graphics processor. Start-up time for PE4 has halved since I disabled the video hardware acceleration - this is before I even open an image.

Ken, I already keep my images on one disk and my OS and Program files on another, but it's a good tip and one that surely must make a difference.

Generally I do have the minimum of applications open, but again, it's the difference between PE2 and PE4 that I found surprising.

I have thought about increasing RAM from 1Gb to 2Gb, but as I use a RAM monitor, which tells you how much you have available, I can tell that it's not really been a problem. If the available amount drops below 100Mb, I tend to save, close Photoshop, restart it and I'm back up to 800Mb+. In normal use I don't have to do this, only really if I'm working on the panoramas - the first one I did was 13 35mm slides, scanned at 5400ppi, all on seperate layers. That did get a bit slow!

Thanks all, new card on order, hopefully speed things up a bit more.
Dan

Hi Don and Liam,

Don, I have already done all your suggestions, although RAM usage is set to 75%, the maximum advised by Adobe. I don't think this is the cause of the slowness, because it's slow to open, and open images, let alone processing them. I usually have around 750Mb of RAM available before opening Elements.

Liam, I have an AGP card, but it does only have 32Mb of RAM. However, I'm doing a direct comparison with the PE2 that I just uninstalled, and it just seems slower. Perhaps I should just splash out a few bob and see if that makes a difference.

BUT, just had a fiddle with my settings, and changed to 'no hardware acceleration' for the video, and everything's got quicker. SO, looks like a new video card might be in order.

I shall have a look around,
Thanks all,
Dan