I think a lesser contrasting background might make this image more interesting, or even a monochrome conversion.

The stack seems to have worked well but at f8 I'd expect most of it to be in focus anyway.

Try the same shot but at f2.8 with about 10 - 20 shots at different focus points.

The image of the paper wasp's nest below is made from 22 individual shots and stacked using CombineZP.

CombineZM is perfectly safe to download and use, but I thought it had been superseded by CombineZP.

As far as I can see, the last update to CZM was in 2008, CZP was in 2010. I'd recommend using the ZP version.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

From the images of the camera I can find on the web it appears that the X-5's lens lacks the necessary thread to facilitate the attachment of filters, so I would have to say I don't think you can attach filters.

The adding of filters to lenses is usually reserved for DSLR cameras and interchangeable lenses. The X-5 is a digital bridge camera, its lens is not interchangeable.

I think lens spanners fall into that group of tools that you use once in a while, but know that if you got rid of it/them, you'll need it/them very soon afterwards.

You'll find all you need and more, here.

Well my world didn't end at 11:11AM this morning.

Is it OK to get out of bed now?

From what Smeggy has written, Lightroom is much faster working with smaller files. I only ever shoot RAW, but if you normally shoot JPG you shouldn't have any issues. That said, I have no speed issues with RAW files either.

I believe Adobe's recommendation when Lightroom was first released was to use multiple catalogues. That recommendation was primarily because their cataloguing mechanism was so slow at the time.

I think it has since been rewritten and handles large numbers of files very well now.

Steve, with only one catalogue, you can keyword all of those images with "Cornwall Autumn 2012". If you have other images of Cornwall keyworded EG: "Cornwall Spring 2012", you can easily search for all images taken in "Cornwall 2012" and have them all there instead of loading different catalogues.

If you were to add other keywords like "Landscape", "Seascape", "Sunset", "Family", etc. You can easily find all images taken of the family in cornwall.

You can also of course maintain a normal folder hierarchy in Lightroom.

A single catalogue is very much simpler in my opinion, but I appreciate if the way you work suits you, that's fine too.

Even though you've not hung out here for a while Stefan, you are still the second highest poster on this site. Second behind JR, of course.

Multiple catalogues causes a complete nightmare if you keyword your images as you can have only one catalogue open at a time.

There really is no need to create more than one catalogue.

Early copies of the DA*16-50mm certainly did have SDM issues, I had two replaced. My third is one of the later ones and has not skipped a beat in around 12 months.

Anybody considering buying a new DA*16-50mm lens should not be put off, the SDM issue was resolved long ago but sadly if enough mud is thrown, some is bound to stick.

Three of my SDM lenses are my most often used. 16-50, 50-135, and 60-250mm. If the proposed DA*16-85mm is a constant 1:2.8 and is also as good as the others, I'll probably buy one as long as it's not rediculously expensive, and sell the three above as I'll not need them any more.