Phew! What a rant I've missed

Nice to know that Cloudhunter will be reserving the vitriol for just this forum and not his own

@Don: thanks for the kind thoughts
@Nathan: welcome back
@George: great to see you posting more frequently

Matt

Agreed
(Perhaps I misunderstood your original post :blush
Not entirely. Some Epson photo printers have a composite profile. You can let Photoshop manage the profile for printers that have separate ICC/ICM profiles for each paper/setting combination (so there's a whole bunch of profiles, often with slightly cryptic names). However, where there is a single profile you have to let the Epson driver handle colour because only the driver can access the embedded combinations for each paper type etc (Or you go through the hassle of doing your own profiles for each setting!)
Does that make better sense??

Matt

Here in the UK, Microquiz - http://www.microquiz.net/
are well reported on.

I seem to remember one forum member getting a slide printed from Photoshop this way for a competition, and the judge saying something like "Now there's quality that you could never get from digital"
If only they knew

You could probably upload the files and get them delivered to him directly.
Matt

I'm suffering from a very bad "signal-to-noise ratio" at the moment

Alas, I don't have the time, health, nor energy to read each post and it is a great pity that these days people seem happy with playing "forum tennis" rather than discussing photographic and post-processing issues.

George: I've always enjoyed your comments, and appreciate the experience you have with Pentax stuff. (though recognise that some cannot take it - such is the nature of the Internet with no real ability to convey nuances :roll.

Technoblurb: all levels are welcome here, and I (as well as many others here) will do all we can to assist with suggestions, and ideas for using Pentax gear

It's just a great pity that threads seem to flare off so quickly these days I honestly can't keep up with it all...

...I'm off to recover now.
Matt

That's not quite true
If you don't understand colour management and how you should set everything up, then yes you can get dull results. But if you know what you're doing AdobeRGB is generally a better bet when you are printing.
But.... until you can get your head around colour management - use sRGB

...and getting Photoshop to manage the colour isn't always the best approach when you are using Epson printers that have specialised colour profiles

Still, going back to the OP - my advice is get a Pantone Huey - just the cheap one - and install ArgyllCMS and dispcalGUI. The Huey calibrates faster than the Spyder, is easier to install under Windows (you don't have to do anything really, whereas the Spyder can be a little tricky) - and you can get them for less than £50 if you look around.

It'll make a world of difference (And at least give you a starting point!)

Matt

Stefan,
It works very well My little Lowepro Nova 3 has the SMC-DA 12-24, the SMC-DA*50-135, the K20D+grip+SMC-DA 17-70, and I can still fit in the AF540. Very discrete, very portable (quite heavy though) but lovely results

As with others, if I have to go anywhere with one lens, it's the K20D+17-70 Winner.

Matt

LOL! The 50/1.4 tags along occasionally... but never makes it out of the bag.

Yes, I've just rattled off nearly 500 RAW shots on two evenings with the 17-70 & 50-135 for a school production. I was chuffed with the results and they are over the moon
...makes we want to do more theatre & play work
EDIT: Almost everytime I go to the theatre I look at the programme and wonder why they can't get the results I do! Probably not using Pentax

Glad you're enjoying the lens John! (I'd have felt bad if I'd recommended it and you didn't like it :shock
Matt

Fabulous shot! Reckon it'll look superb on a wall.

Yes, my 17-70 gets used more and more. I used to use the SMC-FA 50/1.4 and SMC-F 100/2.8 macro for low light concert and show work (e.g. kids school stuff). The 17-70 is almost indistinguishable from the 50/1.4 in those situations but is MUCH more versatile.

The poor 50/1.4 hasn't been getting much use lately!

Adding the SMC-DA*50-135 is just the icing on the cake

Matt

Annoying as some of RiceHigh's "measurebations" are, at least he did have the sense to test the K-m vs Canon 5D all with Pentax glass (FA28/2.8 vs FA43/1.9 Ltd). Looks like he prefers the K-m Olive from today's post

But, unfortunately, he seems to be a JPG guy - so there goes the test results out the window

Matt

Just a point with the ultra-low light shot of the cave...

When you get down to VERY low light levels, the metering starts to hit its limits. If you take the time and do a test exposure and adjust according to the histogram you'll probably find you'll get a much better result

An underexposed high ISO image is really an image at a much higher ISO. So, if you've shot at ISO6400, but need to dial in +1 at the processing stage then you've actually shot at ISO12800

Personally, I've found ISO3200 to be very acceptable with Silkypix when correctly exposed, and regularly shoot at ISO2000 and ISO2500 and get the results I need.

Just a thought

Matt