Yes Fiona, the 35mm Macro is a prime lens, that is, one of fixed focal length.

If that's all you need to carry then you'll suffer a lot less than most of us!

The wicked technique that will make it easy is.....practice. I don't have the patience, but Sue would do this one in minutes. So my secret software is my wife...

Thanks for the comments.

The colours are not enhanced as such. The post processing is kept to a minimum and just involves cropping, adjustment of levels and sharpening in Photoshop 7.

I think it's becoming clearer that the term in common usage is being used to describe "the aesthetic qualities" of the out of focus areas in an image.

It's a relatively new term and any clarification, which we are working our way through in this thread, must be a good thing.

It's no use clinging to the original technical description, if indeed there is one, if most people are talking about something different.

Some of these web sources are not particularly reliable unfortunately. Lots of information out there, much of it not very accurate. We seem to have a Hitch Hiker's Guide To The galaxy evolving.

There won't be any more of that because it will be deleted....it's probably more unhelpful than abuse, but it's still not in the spirit of things.

Clearly fuzzy logic.

Incident metering measures the light falling on the subject as opposed to light reflected from it. Therefore, in theory, it will not matter whether your subject us 18% grey or not.

In practice, it will take time and for 95% of shots will make little difference.

Potentially better maybe, and if you fancy having a go then there are plenty of inexpensive light meters on eBay, some very good.

That's fair enough. Always an open mind.

If it looks good, it is good?

As you can use the camera as a spotmeter I don't see any advantage to having a separate meter any more. There used to be, and purists will perhaps disagree, but I think the eneregy would be better expended on really learning how to use the camera meter.

Here's an image from Logan Botanical Gardens, which is south of Stranraer.
[IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/johnriley1uk/030-Bee-in-Flight.jpg[/IMG]
Pentax K20D, SMC Pentax-DA 55-300mm lens.