My sons both play keyboard, as well as my youngest son's Girlfriend, so we're pretty well covered in that area! I'm trying to learn guitar, but not enough time to practice at the moment

Cheers
David

About 6 or 8 months ago I posted some images explaining why I hadn't been on the site very much last year. This is a continuation of that theme and explains why my visits to the site have also been a bit scant this year. I've been a bit busy renovating the cellars in our Victorian House.

From this.............




To this..................




From this.............














To this.................










One and a half more rooms to go before it's finished!

Cheers
David

Just great, the quality of both images and lens shines through.

Regards
David

Regardless of 'no sunset' and 'no fast clouds' these are great. The second one and the last one are stunners, all in all I would say this was well worth the effort!

Regards
David

Hi Carl

It doesn't look as though you were struggling, these are excellent. BTW, just a thought on your comment re the K-3's exposure, I recall meeting up with you a year or so ago at Tickhill and comparing your K-5iis with mine - we spoke about the differences in exposure measurements between the two. Could it be that your K-3 is accurate and your K-5iis is exposing incorrectly, but you've just go used to it? My K-3 seems to expose almost exactly the same as my K-5iis.

Cheers
David

Ha Ha, that's made me laugh Stuey! I've got enough work on at home still, never mind doing anyone else's!

I'll post a few pics of what I've been doing soon, but I don't think the properties John went to are my cup of tea, they look even worse than our hose did.

Cheers
David

Beautiful shots, both of them. Number 2 takes the prize for me.

Regards
David

Hi Phil

Welcome to the Forum, you are right, it is very good, lots of great advice and help available. BTW, don't dismiss the K-x, it's a superb little camera, not built as well as a K20D, but it was an entry level DSLR when introduced. It takes superb images and is especially good at higher ISO's.

Regards
David

This is quite an interesting thread, discussing an aspect of lens performance that is often regarded as secondary. The 150-450 appears to be a superb lump of glass, but as DrO pointed out, bokeh is of high importance with long lenses, depending on the type of images being taken and the results the photographer is trying to achieve, As Mike mentions, with bird shots there is often a mess of twigs, but to me this raises this importance of smooth bokeh. Messy backgrounds with bird images is a pet hate of mine, I know it's sometimes unavoidable, but I don't like it. I've always found that my DA*300 copes with backgrounds superbly well, with or without the 1.4TC.

Mike has also pointed out that the Tulip image has been framed according to the background, however I know that when this was shot, the distance to the Tulips behind was not very far, probably 2 or 3 feet. This shot was not 'planned', it was a grab shot with the DA*300 wide open at F4. Here's a couple of bird shots with the DA*300 and 1.4TC, again I appreciate the background is not full of twigs, but I think these demonstrate how well this lens smooths out background details.







Regards
David

Hi Daron

The lens looks to be stellar in the sharpness / colour department, but I tend to agree with DrOrloff's comment on the bokeh, it does seem to produce 'messy' out of focus areas. You asked for an image with nice bokeh, the one below was taken with the DA*300, a lens which I think produces lovely, smooth out of focus areas.




Cheers
David