Thanks for the feedback David, and the judging also
Congrats to the winners!

Tony,

Thanks for the tip - and gladly, if I knew where & what they were (I have not added anything by way of security to my account, images or galleries). Interesting thing is that one of my images here stayed put, and continues to do so, yet its stablemates (even those from the same gallery) won't play.

Have you got any handy hints / experience with Pbase per chance please?

Colin - apologies for diverting your thread for entirely selfish motives

Tim,

I wonder whether a decimal place was missing in the aperture specs there perhaps? Speculating that an 'f40' lens might tempt Joe Fraunhofer to return and have words with us about diffraction...

Colin,

I thought that C&C might be facilitated if I had a dabble with your image - I hope you don't mind! Not sure what software you use for your images - what I have done is with Lightroom 3 beta.

My aim was to give the image a bit of a lift, and a bit more life / zing etc.

Essentially, white balance and tint were increased to the 'light' (right hand) sides.

The black point was upped to 7; the contrast, clarity and vibrance were all increased. Exposure was opened up by a quarter of a stop. I changed the 'curve' from linear to medium contrast also.

I increased the saturation of greens, blues and reds a little, and lastly sharpened only the main details a little (I masked everything else).

While this might sound a bit complicated, it's all achieved with a few sliders and buttons - if you don't like an effect, slide the control back the other way! You can't hurt the image. It's all up to you and your Mk I eyeball - if you like the look of it, then keep it. It's largely personal taste.

Anyway, here's my take on it - your mileage may of course vary (and well done if it does).

I have had to do this via a link to the image in my Pbase gallery, as I still cannot get images to link and embed here...

link

JudithAnn,

If you want less noise, a lower ISO might help (at the expense of a longer exposure). Therefore, what Will said above is good advice - a tripod is the best way to make it all work for you.

The rule of thumb for hand held shots I picked up on is that the minimum shutter speed is no less than one over the focal length used. That way you maximise the chance of avoiding blur, and maximise your image sharpness.

Your FL was 50 mm, so 1/50 is then your minimum handheld shutter speed. As an aside, this also makes using longer teles fairly ambitious in low light, without a suitable rest (think 1/200 or 1/300 for eg, and so on...).

Hope this helps, and all the best.

Kris,

I like them all, and the sunset one is really dramatic with its colours.

I particularly like the mirage effect in the 2nd image, between the water and the distant shoreline. Nice work.

Mike, great thought for eliminating possibilities! Logged out, shut the pbase tab, then came back here - images are still visible (to me anyway).

While I'm at it, thanks so much to you and Tim for chipping away at a solution - I appreciate it.

Mike,

and while I have been pasting image links and attempting to post images here (only to cancel each post when the image linking failed), I can now see all of the images where before I saw only the dreaded red X! :

It appears I may have succeeded in posting to the snow thread with a pbase gallery image...

Hi all,

While there's no snow on offer in Oz at this time of year, I have an image from our Southern Hemisphere winter - Mt Baw Baw looking South over Latrobe Valley, Victoria. The blob on the lens is - SNOW!