Yeah that's what she said. Trust me there was nothing random about it if I know anything about women...

(Actually, humans really if I'm honest. Don't hit me for the sexist comment!)

Nice shots but I personally think they would look better given darker exposures to give more of a sense of 'night time' especially for the first shot. Of course that may not be what you're after - if you are then it's a simple matter to adjust the exposure in PP.

Did a quick levels adjustment using GIMP to show what I mean. You lose a little detail but gain a lot in atmosphere, IMO. The result would look better from processing the RAW file rather than the JPEG of course.

Hope you don't mind me posting it, if you do I will take it down - it's your photo.

[IMG]http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/msitaylor/PP%20Examples/scarboro-harbour-night-1.jpg[/IMG]

Except the correct adjustment for your eye is probably not at either extreme, but somewhere in between (or if you have poor eyesight, somewhere off the scale entirely). The only meaningful result is when it's correctly adjusted from your eye, not when it's incorrectly adjusted for your eye regardless of to which end of the scale.

True, but there is no way of telling whether external factors which could cause movement in the tripod were the same for both shots. Hence the last two points I mentioned. A gust of wind or operator movement at the wrong time can have its effect.

I'm sure he did read your post. Adjusting it from one extreme to the other is not the same as adjusting it correctly for your eye.

I notice the EXIFs for these shots show a six second exposure. You do have to be careful when using a tripod for long exposures - just the fact of using the tripod doesn't guarantee a stable image and any lack of stability whatsoever will adversely affect the sharpness, which may be what we're seeing in these images. There are several precautions you can take to make sure the setup is as stable as possible when using a tripod and cable release:

- Use a good quality tripod! Cheap tripods are more prone to unwanted movement.

- Weight your tripod if possible, especially if it is a fairly light tripod. Some tripods have a ballast hook for this purpose.

- Ensure all locking rings, knobs etc. on the tripod and head are fully tightened.

- Remember to turn off SR (or IS in the case of Canon lenses which have it).

- Use mirror lockup mode if possible.

- Stand completely still for several seconds before taking the shot and remain still until the exposure is over. Any movement on your part can be transmitted through the ground to your tripod causing vibrations so give any residual vibrations time to die down first.

- Be aware of environmental factors which may cause movement in your tripod such as wind,heavy traffic or even just pedestrians passing close by (this can cause vibrations in the ground). Of course depending on the situation there may be nothing you can do about such factors.

Thanks for the nice comments, guys!

You know, several Canon users I know complain of focusing problems but they all seem to accept it as a general DSLR problem. It's only the Pentax users who seem to want to blame it on their brand...

A compact camera with it's small sensor and massive relative depth of field will always 'pee all over' any DSLR when it comes to focussing in the type of situation you refer to. This is one of the primary reasons a compact camera is so much easier to use (but correspondingly much more limited) than a DSLR. Most of the time you don't even need to consider focus because you will simply never achieve a shallow enough depth of field to get an eyeball out of focus when the tip of the nose is in focus. With the depth of field it has to play with, the AF system simply doesn't have to be very accurate.

Of course, if you are talking about one of the interchangeable lens Lumix models which has a 4/3 sensor that's a bit different - but you still can't compare it to a DSLR as the lack of an optical viewfinder allows it to use contrast detect AF all of the time (and last time I read up on it - which granted was a few months ago - these G and GF series Lumix cameras had the fastest contrast detect AF system on the market, by a fair margin. i.e. They 'pee all over' most other cameras in this respect).

I'm a member of 3 different local photography groups, which means I get out and about on photographic field trips with a variety of different photographers on a very frequent basis. My personal experience from working with people using other brands and getting the chance to use them occasionally myself suggest that the Nikons have a slight edge when it comes to AF. The Canons fare about the same as my K-5. This, of course, is purely my personal impression.

I know one particular photographer who owns and uses a pair of Canon 5D MkIIs. He also does a lot of low-light portraiture. He considers the AF to be worthless in this situation and generally gets an assistant (i.e. whoever happens to be around) to shine a torch on the model's face while he focuses manually! Funnily enough his complaint is exactly what you've said in your posts - the camera tends to focus on the tip of the subject's nose.

---If you're still thinking of switching to Canon you might want to think about borrowing or hiring one and testing it first.

For what it's worth, permanently switching to centre-point only solved all my AF problems (which were occasional and minor in the first place).