Actually, the wooden tripod was supplied with the lens, all in a huge case.

When things make noises they didn't before and strange things happen for no apparent reason I would pay attention to it, just in case some further damage is being done.

Well thank you for all that and congrats to everyone. A very interesting subject.

I'm delighted to choose the next competition and it will be posted early this evening.

In the meantime I shall have to think up something challenging whilst I am out and about on my travels.

See you later!

"Ghosts From The Briny"

One would hope so.

We had a bizarre meeting with a hot air baloon once. We were sitting in a field with our picnic nicely laid out and the sun slowly sinking...very nice setting.

A small truck suddenly arrived, and the bizarre part was them unloading a hot air baloon, setting up the heater and floating off into the sunset.....

It all seemed rather surreal at the time.

We seem to have two threads going on the same subject. Rather than merge them and cause more confusion I'll lock this one.

Can you continue this in the other thread in General Ditital please.

No, but I'll bet it's a cracker.

Lab mode offers a useful sharpening technique that is especially good for architecture.

Basically you convert the RGB image to Lab, select the lightness channel only and apply large amounts of sharpening. This sharpens the basic black and white structure of the image without affecting the chrominance in colour channels a and b. So, you get very sharp images without smearing the colour.

After the sharpening, convert back to RGB ready for saving.

You can't create art with a Photoshop plug-in, or indeed a PS filter. It's an electronic bit of wizardry created by someone else.

What you can do is use PS creatively to make images that speak to the viewer on perhaps more than one level. This is different to playing with effects.

Having said that, my EPZ images have plenty of examples of PS being used quite obviously to create effects. On the other hand, I think the best ones are where PS has been used, possibly extensively, and it's clear from the comments that nobody has noticed.

Lilly, you have done some super photography, but I think the best is more subtle than the ones in this thread. I find them a little over the top and harsh, but I would carry on experimenting. Perhaps an eye towards looking for more subtle effects?

Hope that helps!

Those look highly desireable, thanks for posting.