It's hard to tell if they're soft or whether the comprssion for the web has taken the edge off.

Certainly all digital images need to be sharpened (last thing we do before saving) but the wide angle shots should definitely be sharp.

It's not at all easy to make a great landscape shot. In terms of content, these have quite a few bits of detail in them that we could do without. It's easy to filter out cars, lamp posts, etc. when we view an attractive scene. We don't notice them.

Then there's lighting. The third shot has the most potential. Imagine if it had no car, no pedestrian, a swan was closer to fill the foreground space and the scene was lit by brilliant evening light with a dark and stormy sky behind. The same scene would be transformed by these things.

But the composition is basically fine in No 3. It just needs better conditions and maybe for you to wait a while whilst the various components of the shot move into position. Perhaps when the sun breaks through the clouds...sometimes landscape photography needs us to grasp a brief moment when everything is right. It's pretty much like action photography then!

A good start though and you just need to look all round the viewfinder and develop your "seeing eye" to notice those details. Then with the right light you'll be well on the way.

Hope that helps!

Press Fn and then OK. You can scroll down through settings for Hue, Saturation, Sharpness, etc.

A Pentax in all but name.

Settings such as natural apply to JPEG capture. Personally I use sRGB, Natural and +1 Sharpness. The reason for the latter is fotoLibra which now forbids any Photoshop sharpening but will accept a small degree of in-camera sharpening.

The photographer's sense of self image? I know people who sport their f1 lenses with pride! Just kidding...

Seriously, in the days of 50mm standard lenses f2.8 would be considered very slow indeed. We would probably buy the f2 or f1.8/1.7 lens and aspire to the f1.4. When the f1.2 arrived that was but a dream.

The old Canon f0.95 was actually often referred to as the "Canon dream".

It was a handy lens to choose as it had been mentioned. If we compare the 55-300mm life may not seem so bad.

If we looked at the 50mm f1.4 we might get depressed....

A very quick check found the following current best prices:

12-24mm lenses
Nikon 759.00
Pentax 553.00
Sigma 554.00
Tokina 448.00
Canon (10-22mm) 578.00

Tomorrow it may be very different, as it may in a month, but when anyone is ready to purchase they can check their favourite dealers and find a price that suits.

Other lenses may have different differentials because of supply and demand issues, so it's very difficult to generalise. We could compare RRPs for different marques, but in the end it's the street price we pay.

Also price is not everything. Don't forget how many times SRS service has saved the day for members here.

OK, that is enough now. The thread is being locked.

Hang on feeb, please don't over-react, I've read the post in question as well and it's not impolite.

As this is going to get over-excited again so easily I'm going to stop it unless it calms down.

That's you in your Avatar Mike? Wow!