It's quite possible that software licensed for use in UK may not be licensed for use elsewhere in the world.

Gwyn,

don't think about it, buy it if it's a good price. You will not regret it.

Regards,

I think Petekd is being his usual provocative self by not replying to a question that has been asked of him several times in this thread alone, and really, who cares what brand he wll use in the future? If it's not Pentax, he'll be wishing that it was. This is a guy who sold a camera because the images it produced were not sharp enough, then, within a few days, bought another camera of the same model. Why, was another camera of the same model more sharp? I don't think so.

Unfortunately for Pete his peers seem to have convinced him that a camera with a name beginning with C or N is better than the one he knows, and professes to love. Confused?, you bet he is.

Hasta pronto Petekd.

Mongoose's summary is very good, but incomplete.

There is another method of producing macro images, and that is to stack two lenses together. If say you mount a 200mm lens (can be a zoom) on the camera, and reverse mount a 50mm lens in front of it, you get a combination which produces around a 4:1 magnification. Stacking rings are merely rings having 2 male filter threads enabling one lens to be reverse mounted on the front of another.

Ideally both lenses should have the same diameter filter thread, but it's not essential. Just ensure you can get an appropriate stacking ring.

PS: Mongoose mentioned that there is no focus adjustment on option one. To achieve focus, you need to move the camera and lens in relation to the subject.

Yes, hit Alt + F9 or click on the Actions tab of the history pallet, or click on Window > Actions.

If you are familiar with macros in other packages, Photoshop actions are much the same. They are simply a record of sequential tasks which you can then repeat by running the 'action' or macro.

What lens did you use? Close scrutiny of the originals shows them to be either a little soft, in need of sharpening, or slightly off focus.

I love these photographs, but I hate your terminology. The term 100% crop is absolutely meaningless, used very often, but meaningless just the same.

Can you determine how much of the original has been cropped away, or how much is left. That would mean much more.

Think for a moment . . . 100% crop . . . does that mean you've removed 100%, which leaves nothing, or have you left 100% which means not cropped at all. I hope you understand what I mean.

Still, they are really good shots and I'm insanely jealous. Well done.

Get a Gigabit Switch George and plug everything into it. They almost all have auto-sensing ports nowadays so 10/100/1000Mb/s devices will all work fine.

For a home network, I can recommend these and for a corporate network, try these.

My best advice is always buy more ports than you think you need. If you have 5 devices and a 5 port switch, you are stuffed if/when a port fails.

My personal choice would be a GS108 or GS116. All of them are silent in operation without any cooling fans.

Make sure you use good quality cables too. Fast ethernet only uses 4 of the 8 wires in your Cat5e cables. Gigabit over copper uses all 8, 250Mb/s for each of 4 pairs.

Regards,

I think most academic license agreements require you to be a full-time student.

Simply being the parent of a full-time student doesn't qualify that parent to use academic licensed software either.