I'm just off out, but my idea was to use the flint spring from the inside of a lighter.. cut to length, or one from a retractable ball point. The latter, I'm sure you'll have somewhere, and if you don't smoke, ask someone who does, for the former. They're bound to have loads of old disposables lying around.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Peter,

what are the dimensions of the spring, roughly?

That's right, Carrie. That's the size of the filter thread.


Absolutely, anything you need to ask at all, someone will know the answer here.. but probably not me.

Cheers

Liam

Another thing Carrie,

I've just had a look through Ebay to find out the filter thread size (the internal thread at the far end of the lens) for the 28-90. It doesn't seem to be marked on a lot of them, but I found one that says it's 58mm.

When buying close up lenses, you will need to know the size, as this what they'll attach to, so if it's not written on the end of the lens, take it with you to the shop, so you can check that they'll fit. You can get adaptors for a couple of quid, if you can't get closeup lenses for the exact size of the thread on the lens.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Carrie, and welcome to the forum.

If money is tight, then close up lenses may be the way to go, as all the extentions tubes with contacts will tend to be expensive..

I just had a look on Ebay, and found these..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/EXTENSION-TUBES-FOR-PENTAX-K-KA-EXCELLENT-CONDITION_W0QQit...

and with 4 day to go, they may double in price.

That's what you're looking for anyway. If you look around the edge of the tubes in the pictures, there are 7(?) contacts. Without those, they won't work.

Of course, if you want to send the choccies and fudge to me, I'll take lots of photos for you.. sadly the fudge and choccies will be non-returnable, and the resulting images will have teeth marks in them..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Matt,

thanks for that. I reckon my shots were in the 1-1.5 stop under exposed, as I did bracket some manually within that range with good results. I also had a play with setting the exposure to the autofocus (spot) with a midtone in view, and that sort of worked.

As far as sharpening goes, I've got GIMP, and halving the default value for the radius (from 5.0 to 2.5) with the inbuilt unsharp mask, I find gives excellent results. Of course, these are for displaying on the intermerweb thingy, rather than print at the moment, so I'll start playing with your action, or transfer the principle to GIMP anyway, when I do get more into print.

Hi Peter,

I've got a hand held meter.. somewhere. It's an old Hanimex Sekonic (about half way down the R/H column) , born before I was.

I do trust the camera.. I assume you mean by leaving it on AutoWB? Normally I have had great success with it, but as I only got the camera back at the end of last year, it's the first time, it's been made to perform on a bright sunny day in a built up area, with lots of contrasting areas. As I've concentrated on a single focal element to the majority of my images, such as a single bird or person, I've not had the practice at a severe multi-tonal images, needing only the main object to be perfect.. by that, I mean that if the background is a stop under it generally adds to the definition of the bit I actually want.. umm.. if you know what I mean.

As for using my hand, it could be that I'm doing it wrong anyway, as it's not a fraction of a stop out, but a stop or more. I just started to type how I used my hand.. and worked out why it wasn't working.

I was trying to take a picture of a building, for instance that was in shade.. I was in direct sunlight and took a reading off my hand, whilst it was being lit up by the sun.

I guess taking a reading off the paving, but in the shadow I cast, would be a lot more accurate. Oh well.. live and learn. That's probably the only (perceived) disadvantage of digital for me.. I'll take a couple of hundred shots with little technical thought, rather than set up each short carefully with film, knowing that each shot was going to cost around 50p a go.

Anyway, enough typing practice for now..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Matt, (and everyone else of course)

I started to post this in Mannesty's thread, but I thought it would be unfair to take the conversation off on a different tangent..

Whilst we're on the subject of RAW files, how much of the work do you do in Rawshooter, Capture 1 etc., and how much do you do in PS. For instance, do you just alter the WB and exposure before converting to TIFF, and then sharpen/saturate etc. in PS, or do you do more than that with the RAW file?

Also, as I'm now accumulating enough memory for a good day out shooting RAW (220+ images), I'll be concentrating more and more on that format now. I understand that RAW takes all the data direct from the sensor, and that there must be certain limitations on what gets recorded; ie. that an image taken at 1/4000 @ F32, when it should be 1/4 @ F4 is going to be a long way outside the limits, but if you take an image in RAW, what sort of latitude for over/under exposure would be easily corrected as a rule?

I ask this because I took lots and lots of photos (***jpg) in Bruges at the weekend, while using aperture priority rather than Auto. It was a very bright sunny day, and although I was using my hand as a 'grey card' for many, I ended up with a lot of under exposed photos, that although not so far off that I couldn't rescue them, did make for a little extra work in GIMP. If I'd shot in RAW, the RAW plugin for GIMP (UFRaw) would have let me do a far quicker job of adjusting them just by sliding the er.. slider. and obviously so would RawShooter Ess.

That's it really,

Cheers

Liam

Hi David,

I don't know PTlens, but in you can correct perspective manually in GIMP, with the perspective tool. In PS6, you use a function of the crop toolbar to alter perspective. Both work in the same way, by giving you tags in the corners to drag the image out until the lines are to your liking. Remember though that if you pull the sides of a building too straight, it may make the image look un-natural.. as you can see in the real world, there is always an element of perspective as you move further away from the object.. especially with big stuff like buildings.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/bllps502f.htm

explains in a bit more detail how it works in PS, and I'll write something up for GIMP later, if you need it.

I'm off out to darts now.

Cheers

Liam

Hi, and thanks for all the positive comments.

Thanks also for proving my point, most definitively, that I've never been a birdwatcher.. ..and I also would like to add a welcome to Martin to the forum..

I looked through the RSPB site (it's linked above, and I've been working too hard this evening to repost the link (although it would have been less characters than I've typed to say why I haven't posted the link)) : to try to identify it, and obviously failed dismally.

I'm hoping to get the gallery for my seabirds up on my site tomorrow, so you can all tell me that I didn't get the shot of the Andean Condor that I thought I did..

G'Night..

Cheers

Liam

Thanks Don,



It's all a matter of context though.. when they're gracefully flying above the cliffs, or gliding effortlessly over the surf, they're beautiful..BUT.. if they're trying to nick my chips on a cold and windy Winter day.. then they're pests. All a matter of priority.

As long as they leave my chips alone they can do what they want..

Cheers

Liam