I can't see any on my monitor. Looks a little soft, but that's OK for a portrait.

EDIT: Having downloaded your image and opened it in Windows Photo Viewer, I think I can see what you are talking about.

Blotches of red in the skin shadows?

I think I have all the lenses I need, but if I had the money, there's only one lens I would add to my collection:-

The smc Pentax-FA* 200mm 1:4 ED & IF Macro lens ...
and the smc Pentax-FA 250-600mm zoom.

There are only two lenses I would add to my collection:-

The smc Pentax-FA* 200mm 1:4 ED & IF Macro lens ...
and the smc Pentax-FA 250-600mm zoom ...
and the smc Pentax-A 50mm 1:1.2

There are only three lenses I would add to my collection:-

Seems hardly fair to blame SRS for a Paypal problem.

This seems to me to be a problem with last minute ordering online.

Why could you not have phoned your order through within working hours?

Anyway, give them a call on Monday, explain what happened, and see how it goes. If you're not satisfied with the result, order earlier next time.

Three words A - Ma - Zing. Well done.

You can still use AF, sharpness shouldn't suffer.


I day write "distant subject"

40% off of Lightroom and PSE from Adobe today, here.

"Going to the subject" and taking a reading will almost always be taking an incident light reading. "Metering my hand" is taking a reflective reading. Two different ways of measuring.

With regard to landscapes, if your distant subject is illuminated by the sun, and where you are standing is also sunny, take an incident reading from where you are, that is, turn the Dome, or Invacone as Weston used to call it, towards the sun and take a reading. That'll save you walking perhaps a couple of miles, only to find the two readings are identical, assuming no cloud, or uniform cloud cover.

Whilst you are interested in exposure and light measuring/estimation techniques, check out the internet for the "sunny 16 rule". You may find it interesting.

If you are photographing a wedding for instance, and using a zoom lens, taking incident light readings is the only way to get consistent exposures.

Using in-camera metering will give almost as many different exposures as the focal lengths of the zooms range you use.

When you vary the focal length of a zoom lens, the amount of light entering the lens also varies and the cameras metering system will alter the exposure accordingly.

Using a light meter and the camera on manual aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, assuming the light level remains constant, will give you the same exposure shot after shot. If aunt Doris' blue rinse is a little too dark in one shot, it'll be the same throughout.

This does have it's benefits believe it or not, when you get to the post processing stage, you make the necessary fine adjustment to exposure/contrast etc, then copy those settings to all images taken in the same conditions.

Lightroom will probably cater for 99.999% of what you'll need to do. Photoshop Elements will do the rest.

Between them, they are an excellent combination.

Full blown Photoshop may be a bit OTT for a newbie.

If you are a registered student you can get them all reasonably cheaply.

Don't forget to ask him how he found your site. Did he just stumble across it, or did he get there via a link somewhere. If so, where.

It's good to know if your advertising is actually working.