I like it, it's funny and you have to take it as it is intended - tongue-in-cheek.

Regards
David

Beautiful image Alan, it doesn't look HDR to me, just beautifully saturated.

Regards
David

I hope you will all forgive me for uploading more Lake District images (sorry George), but I've had such an enjoyable weekend I just wanted to share a few. All with the K-5 and a mixture of the Pentax-M 28mm F3.5 with Hitech ND Grads and the DA 16-45 with a Polariser.

1 - Fire over Ullswater, DA 16-45



2 - Yacht in Dawn Mist - DA 16-45



3 - Two Yachts - DA 16-45



4 - Ullswater Misty Morning - DA 16-45



5 - Contemplation - Pentax-M 28mm F3.5



6 - Horse in the Landscape - Pentax-M 28mm F3.5



Thanks for looking.

Best wishes
David

All excellent, number 3 is my favourite too.

Regards
David

I prefer #1 also, but would maybe aim for something that is 2/3 of the way to #1, when compared to #2, as you may have lost a little too much of the shadow detail on #1. It's very difficult to tell at the resolution I'm viewing at, especially on a laptop screen.

Regards
David

Lovely image Stan, definitely #1 is the best, de-saturating does nothing for it!

It's so vibrant and different from most of the butterfly pics we see, mine included.

Regards
David

If you can't shoot at 1/25, you could probably get away with something not too fast and the flash power dialled down a bit. This would have given images with less noise than no flash as you could have used a lower ISO. However, I'm a bit puzzled with your observations that there is too much noise, unless it was extremely dark in there.

A few weeks ago I shot a load of images at my Niece's 18th in pretty dark conditions and on most I did not use flash. To get a decent shutter speed (1/25th to 1/80th) I had to shoot at 1250 ISO and a wide aperture of f2.8. The images were shot with a K-x, as my K-5 was at the repairers; bear in mind that although the K-x is great in low light, it cannot come close to the K-5. The resulting images were excellent IMHO and had very little intrusive noise, even without applying noise reduction.

Can you post a couple of pics so we can have a look?

Regards
David

Just Brilliant Alan, and congratulations on getting them published.

Regards
David

PM sent.

Regards
David

I'm not sure if this is a little off topic, but was mentioned in your post. I find the black eneloops very disappointing - they don't seem to last as long as the white ones for some reason!

White eneloops in my flashguns seem to last forever.

If you are going to use flash, my thoughts would be to dial it down as far as you can without under-exposing and shoot a slowish shutter speed with slow synch set. This way you'll retain some detail from the exposure and it won't be bleached out. The only problem is you might struggle with the movement of the band. Cabstar is the one to give you the best advice on this as he is the master of shooting live bands.

Regards
David