Well I like the top shot best but . . .

It would work better (agreeing with Matt) if there was a little more to the left of the bird in the top crop.

My suggestion for a killer pic is to adjust your crop such that the birds legs are roughly in the middle (perhaps a little to the right) of the horizontal axis. That should be about right.
I personally disagree with those that like the second crop better. There is too much (un)detail to the left of the main subject. Also, your subject is a portrait subject and to my mind is best printed as such. You could also try my suggestion of losing a bit of the tail. Just to see how it works if nothing else.

Excellent photo and at ISO 800 too, well done.

Constructive criticism: I think the photo would benefit from some cropping, leaving about as much all round as you have below the tallons. Also make it portrait instead of landscape. You might need to lose a bit of its tail to achieve this but I don't think the photo will suffer any.

Fun comment: Wild, he looks livid to me. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Regards,

I would have to say to the original poster, who has only had her K10D a few days, forget RAW . . for now. Get to know your new tool first by banging off pics in JPEG format of whatever offers itself in front of your lens.

When you are familiar with how the camera behaves or rather, when you've tamed it by changing a few custom settings, then switch to RAW.

Treat your K10D as a very intelligent point 'n shoot, tweak its settings until you are comfortable with everything and how it works first. Make pictures (RAW) later.

Regards,

hi all,

I thought some of you might be interested in this. I made it from a K mount taken from an old (cheap) extension tube and an old 58mm Skylight filter. Add a few spots of Araldite and its done. I chemically cleaned, then abraded the surfaces to be glued. It was finished in a couple of hours. Not rocket science I know, but it does the job.

The following are some quick 'n dirty shots to illustrate, with a couple of sample images taken with it at the end. Not brilliant quality due to lack of time.













This one shows my SMC Pentax-A 50mm 1:1.4 reverse mounted on the camera body using a 49mm reversing adapter, and the ring light attached to my ring light adapter.




And a couple of sample shots







Regards,

1: I know, I use it a lot.
2: I know, I see it a lot.
3: You don't, then you haven't looked.

Please don't abuse the PM feature of this forum to REPEAT yourself yet again.

Careful Matt, you might get another pic of Merlin

I think I'm right in saying that Adobe Gamma only works for CRT monitors, not LCD/TFT monitors.

WIZYWIG should be OK for LCD/TFT's

check out

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3597&highlight=img

which explains all

Nice pic, but now my post below it is pretty meaningless.

I preferred the shot of Merlin personally.

Cheers,

Blimey, this dog/bitch gets everywhere