Nice images. It takes skill to use a fisheye lens to good effect.

I'm not sure what conclusions we are supposed to draw from that as we already have the shake reduction technology, with any lens. No doubt that it will continuously be improved as time goes by, but it's already more than up to removing the need for a tripod in many situations.

In lens shake reduction adds expense to every lens and also complication, so presumably there will be a higher incidence of lens failures.

The images in the article are very dramatic, if a bit over-sharpened for my taste.

It's sifficent that you've said it's sold. Hopefully some feedback will follow that will encourage future buyers, so we'll leave the thread open for that.

Yes, I think so.

If you are using CS2 or later, then opt for "Bicubic Sharper" when resampling to downsize for the web. This will maintain sharpness better than standard Bicubic.

I'm going to differ from Daniel's advice and say I would resize in one go.

However, I normally use Bicubic and downsize in one go using the crop tool. I enter 1000px wide for EPZ or 800px wide for this forum, leaving the height blank to sort itself out, and then of course a resolution of 72ppi.

Possibly helpful would be to save your large image unsharpened and then apply the appropriate amount of sharpening to the reduced size image. For the web I use sharpening of 50%, radius 2, threshold 3.

A full sized image for print needs more sharpening than that - I'd go for at least 100%.

Near the bottom of the tools pallette (left of screen) there are three buttons - normal view, grey background and black background. Click the one of choice and to remove all the tools and pallettes press the Tab key on the keyboard. To reinstate them, press Tab again.

That gives you the latgest possible uncluttered view against a background colour of your choice.

Last question first - yes. 800 pixels wide is ideal. Any bigger is a waste of memory and will not improve image quality. It will also slow down loading and probably distort the web page as well.

I'm not sure that the Windows display is the best way to view your images - it is probably making all sorts of decidions for you that are intended to enhance poor quality images from compact cameras.

I would view in Photoshop, and in fact always do.

Just a note about an accepted rule with the competitions, and that is that once an image is posted it should not later be replaced. An exception could be if someone genuinely uploads the wrong file in error. Then it would be OK to fairly quickly replace it with the right one.

The reason for this rule is that it would be unfair for anyone to replace their image in the light of seeing other images that have been posted.

So one shot only at the competitions please!

Which came first? Yes, there is now an official link with Pentax User but there is no negative connotation to this.

What came first was this forum and it's members "adopting" Chris at SRS as the man to call and Chris offering us the best deals he could. The favoured position here was earned, and after a couple of years probably of excellent service the link was formalised in that SRS are now the official supplier of Pentax accessories to the club members.

However it was the membership of the forum and SRS who started the process and Chris has earned our support and respect.

What an interesting bit of info - I had no idea that it rained spray paint in your part of the world!