I won this one..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7588802775&rd=1&...



I now have the full set..ish,

18-55 DA
35-80 (52.5-120)
100-300 (150-450)

in AF

so that's 18-450 in AF zoom. I also saw a 50mm 1:2 for 1.44E here..

http://photography.listings.ebay.ie/For-35mm-SLR_To-Fit-Pentax_W0QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ...

along with a 1:1.7 for the same price.

Any way.. sleep.

Cheers

Liam

Hi George,

nothing wrong with the code perse, that you used; but as Matt said, you used HTML. If you look at the options panel on the reply form, you'll see that HTML is switched off, but that BB is switched on.

BBCode is the default coding for use with these boards.. click on the link there and you'll get an FAQ on what you can do with it. Some of the formatting is slightly different to what I'm used to at other forums, such as..

Pentax Forum

..doesn't work, whereas..

Pentax Forum

does. Some forums use the " " to enclose the URL, but we don't use them here.

Cheers

Liam

I thought the name sounded familiar..

Hi,

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PENTAX-ME-SUPER-chrome-35mm-SLR-Camera-Body-EXC_W0QQitemZ7...

I've seen ME Supers with a couple of lenses go for a third of this. The next one down, although identical is going for £30. The same two (noobs) are bidding on it.. do they know something???

Again, just curious.

Cheers

Liam

I tried backlit..

Hi,

I've been off work today with the flu, so thought I'd practice a bit more with some macro work. I have a little gallery here..

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/galleries/macro2/ (only 14 images)




30s @ f22 ISO 200

(I was going to post up the one of a match, until my golfing scribbler kindly voluteered to model, seeing as how pencils seem to be the macro image of choice this week)

I used a Promura 28-80 macro zoom with a 2x converter and 2 x 28mm tubes.

I didn't use the full macro potential of the lens.. because I couldn't get any light between the lens and the object, it really can get that close. I'll have to find something transluscent to shoot, just so I can get backlight..

If you have a look at the first image in the gallery, that's some of the portcullis on the back of a 1p piece, to give an idea of scale.

I had to pull out quite a way for anything less flat. I used a hand held flash for some and ambient light for others. Having (as mentioned somewhere else here) a radio transmitter for the flash means that I can just hold it in one hand with the cable release in the other, pointing it in the right direction.

Cheers

Liam

Hi John,

it was fun. I actually found it quicker using RAW, even with trying to work out how to use RS. It works out at around 3 minutes an image, start to finish.

I've been using computers for years, and I'm on the staff of a few tech forums, so it's not that big a deal. I'll be adding a bigger hard drive pretty soon anyway; I've seen some 300gb externals going for change out of £100.

As far as Photoshop goes, I actually like GIMP, and as far as I can tell, does everything that PS can. There's a brand new version coming out in June as well, that has a few more bits and pieces. The added bonus is of course that GIMP is open source software and free. If it doesn't do something, then someone writes it into an update.

As an example, the latest version couldn't handle the jpeg exif data from certain cameras (mine being one of them), so a guy called Tor Lillqvist wrote libexif_12.dll it so that it did. There's also UFRaw, which is the RAW plugin for GIMP (it can also be used as a standalone app), that looks and works in a similar way to RS.

I'll have a play with yesterday's PEFs later in it. One of the advantages is that once the RAW work is done, you just click OK and it launches the jpeg into a new GIMP window, GIMP being open by default. UFRaw was able to open the DL's PEF file before RS 2006 came out, hence me getting it first. I'm not sure if it covers batches yet, so that'll be a little fun time for me.

Oh, I'll just add that I run this on a Windows machine.

The actual shoot.. ie. who should be in what pictures was decided by the birthday girl, so that put paid to my carefully choreographed plan of action, which was probably better for all concerned.

Cheers

Liam

Hi all,

yesterday I had my first proper "job" with the DL. A ninth birthday party for a friends grand-daughter. I took along Mrs Liam as my assistant. I'm not gettig paid, except for a few beer tokens, but I treated it as a paid job, to get some practice in. It highlighted a few shortcomings with getting kids to pose, and also with using backgrounds, so I was on a learning curve from the off. I took around 40 pictures in RAW, which was plenty, as the girls were starting to get bored by then. I was shooting 10, maybe 15 minutes tops.

I haven't really used RAW properly before, but got the folder into Rawshoter Essentials, and checked my work. Technically, they were all pretty much spot on, with only minor colour temp, and exposure changes. I then converted to 16 bit TIF and exported.. and saw that the file size for each image was in the 35mb range. I really need a bigger hard drive.

I stopped that and exported as jpeg instead. A little sharpening up in GIMP, and job done. I think the post-processing took around 2 hours, start to finish, and that included learning the basics of Rawshooter.

The Mum is going to get the pictures printed off the CD I'm giving her, at the local print shop, when she has the money, hence deciding to export in jpeg. If she wants a 16x20 later on (well you never know) , then I can always go back to the rws file and get a TIF image out.

All in all a good day. Things I need to remember and work on.. it might help some one else;

Watch for shadows on the background.

Get a decent background to begin with.. I had the instruction that the girl loved pink, so we got a piece of pink material to use. It was big enough for the one and two person shots, but no good for group shots. I reckon on an absolute minimum of 4m² for a group of 7 nine year olds.

I shot against the biggest wall, with a window behind me. When I set up the flashes (bounce straight up onto the ceiling with a Sunpak 3600, and a little fill in from one of those little pentax slaves, the Sunpak being operated by a chinese radio remote, and the popup flash giving general lighting and exposure) it was cloudy, but then the sun came through for a minute. This gave me a couple of slightly over exposed shots.. shooting RAW, it was well within the scope of RS to correct, but might have meant a bit more work with a jpeg in GIMP.

When shooting a group of kids, remember that their attention span is about that of a goldfish, so be quick, and keep making them smile. They were at the birthday party for their benefit not mine.. If you can, learn their names as well. They appreciate it more than "you, with the blue jumper, just move in a bit". I got there in plenty of time to watch a couple of party games and got their names from that.

All in all, a successful day, because as you all know you don't learn anything much if it all goes well, but learn plenty if it goes a bit wrong.

I even had a bit of time to design a CD cover for the finished article.




That was my day anyway.. also went to the seaside for an hour.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

Just doing my rounds of ebay and found this..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Pentax-SLR-f-zoom-28mm-to-80mm-auto-or-manual_W0QQitemZ758...

Before you ask, it's not me.

For a tenner it might be worth someone bidding. You should get that back reselling the body.

Ch3eers

Liam

Hi,

I wrote this tutorial for the design class on another site.. thought it may interest someone. I'd have linked to it directly, but it's not a public forum. Although this is an explanation of the process in GIMP, it should transfer to PS easily enough.

===============================================



This tutorial is intended to show you how to create a frame for your picture before placing it on a web page.

Application: GIMP

Level: Lower Intermediate

First, open a new layer measuring (approx) 285 x 220 pixels @ 72dpi. Make the background transparent. Now click on File | Open as Layer and locate the picture you’d like to frame.




Select the picture, and then click Open. You may need to scale the picture to the intended size of your finished image. To do this, click on Layer | Scale Layer and increase/reduce the size of the picture until it is just slightly smaller than the area you have chosen for the background., and click the Scale button. ( This may be behind your work area now) You can of course play around with the scale tool to get the most pleasing view of the picture.

Next, create a new transparent layer. We’re going to fill this with the surface finish of the frame. For this tutorial we’re going to go for a brushed aluminium effect. Fill the background with a pale grey colour. Then go to Filters | Noise | Scatter HSV and choose the following values.





Next, apply gaussian blur. Go to Filters | Blur | Gaussian Blur and choose the following values.





To do this you may need to break the link between horizontal and vertical by clicking the chain link.

Next click Select | All, then Select | Shrink and shrink by 20 pixels. Next we need to give the illusion of depth to the frame. Shrink again, this time by 1 pixel, and use the Fill tool to fill the area with black. Next, shrink by 2 pixels and using the Blend Tool set to linear, fill the inner area in diagonally, from top left to bottom right using a dark and light grey. Next shrink by 1 pixel again and fill in in black. Now right click in the middle of the frame and choose Edit | Cut.




That’s it. You now have a framed picture to put on your site. You can of course use any colour style of frame that you like, but this shows you the uses of a couple of tools you may not have used before.

===============================================

Cheers

Liam