Thanks a lot for the comments and advice, everyone. I tried a few shots at the same location in similar light, this time pointing at the sky to meter, and got much better results. I tried some indoor flash pics today though and got one or two disappointingly overexposed shots. Furthermore I'm frequently getting out-of-focus shots when focusing at closer than infinity, even when using trap focus! I hope my failing eyesight wouldn't have a problem with a traditional focusing screen, but I bought some 35mm film and a pair of batteries for my old Program A last week so I'll soon find out.

I think the autofocus 35mm might be the answer, or possibly to keep the SLR for those occasions I'm happy to carry a zoom around and invest in a good compact with a viewfinder.

Hi all,

I wanted to try my old SMC Pentax-A 28mm F2.8 as a more compact if less versatile alternative to the usual zoom, so I attached it to my K100D Super and took it outside to take a few test pics. Unfortunately the results are none too pleasing - quite overexposed, with the sky being completely blown out in some cases. I've attached two of the worse ones.

Is this to be expected? I was using multi-segment metering, and Auto set both on lens and camera. What's the best approach to overcome this? Images are resized but otherwise untouched. Grateful for any suggestions.

The third one hurts my brain - the image seems to flicker in and out of being a real scene as the eye wanders over it! Very good.

Very nice. I don't think the background needs to be interesting; in fact I think the bland greyness of the sky shows off the lines of the aircraft beautifully.

I won't claim that I've fixed it, but after playing around with the image in the GIMP for a few minutes, here's a sort of "proof of concept" prototype, to demonstrate that someone with the necessary patience and expertise with an image editor could probably remove the clutter on the other side of the wall.

Yes, I think you're both right about the clutter on the right hand side. I'm sure the washing line, or whatever it was, and the lamp are a bit too much to clone out.

Thanks for having a look!

I captured this cat in Dubrovnik, last week. Interested to hear comments.




This image is actually a crop, to see what the two-thirds rule would do for it. The cat is centred on the original photo.

K100D Super + stock zoom.

Thanks all. I had a closer look in the GIMP and there's a built-in filter for lens distortion to fix the curvy lines, so I tried that. Then after a bit of Googling, I found that the "perspective tool" can be used to adjust the leaning. This is a first attempt, and not quite there but I think I'm on the right track.




Thanks again!

This is a pic I took in Paris earlier in the week. It's not particularly interesting except that it illustrates quite nicely a problem that this particular camera, a Canon compact digital, is prone to.




I think this may be known as "keystoning", but in any case the problem is obvious: vertical lines toward the edges tend to lean inwards in a graceful, curvy manner.

Can this be corrected using an image editor such as the GIMP, or Photoshop? Are there any other (preferably free, and available for Linux) tools that will do the job?

Grateful for any advice.

Love the Sabre and the Hurricane, but especially the biplane (Tiger Moth?)