A tricky one. I should start by saying I have no experience of this retailer at all (others may have?) but I'm tempted to say it looks 'too good to be true' - the prices are very (unusually) competitive. There are logos on there from McAffee and COMODO but they don't actually hot-link to those organisations (I would have thought they should??) and a quick scout around some other comments on the web (just type the name of the shop into google) suggests that you may wish to do a bit of further research and exercise caution.

Hope that helps

Mat

I quite often see used Pentax 67 lenses in the camera shops around London - London Camera Exchange or Jacobs... might be worth looking at their websites as I think they give current listings of their used gear...?

Regards

Mat W

Those two pictures look pretty good to me as ISO 1600. I don't know if this helps but I was testing the high ISO performance of my K-7 last week at an aquarium. It was dark, and flash wan banned, and of course the fish were moving around so the only way I could get the shutter speeds i was looking for was to whack up the ISO. I have attached a couple here, although these are ISO 3200 rather than 1600. The result are a little mixed. The first (big shiny fish) is pretty good I think for that high ISO (others will know better than me if this is usual). the other two are noticeably more noisy...










Apologies if I have gone a bit off-topic as these are not ISO 1600.

Regards

Mat W

Great shots! I especially like the first one. All are really sharp and bright. Very jealous

I think there's something in what you say here. I should state that I am by no means an 'old hand' at SLR photography - far from it. Nor do I feel many of my images are in the same league as the wonderful shots I often see here and elsewhere. However, I did a lot of film based (exclusively B&W and fully manual) photography at school (almost 20 years ago now); and have returned to SLR photography in the last couple of years.

Comparing the two, I have been struck by the 'instancy' (is that a word?) and accessibility of dSLR photography. It is very easy to take a lot of pictures (hundreds on a memory card rather than 36 on a film) very cheaply (Once you have the camera) and no need for a darkroom and a spot of chemistry to get the images - pretty straightforward with some cheap yet powerful software packages instead.

I think the new technology enables people to get a result which they will be (very) proud of pretty quickly, which is very encouraging to the individual and a great spur to keep going and trying to capture great images - a good thing I think. However the required discipline from the time of limited pictures on a roll of film and perhaps a wait to see results has clearly been eased somewhat.

For myself, I probably fall between the two camps. I certainly do use the technology to an extent (I am not exactly a photoshop whizz) but I also try to use a degree of skill and patience in the image capture process, otherwise I would just end up with hundreds of raw images to trawl through and process!

I have also been on a couple of photo workshops (with the wildlife photographer Chris Weston) which I have found to be really useful as well..., and in terms of getting to grips with exposure, shutter speed etc., I would point any newbie photographer to John Shaw's wildlife photography field manual - which I thought was brilliant (whether you're into wildlife photography or not), and I still refer to it now, if only get continuing inspiration from the pictures in it!!

Regards

Mat

I don't mind them. Indeed I rather like them, although they can be very persistent critters sometimes if you're sitting by the coast with some food in your hand... They tend to be pretty fearless of people, and quite large, which I reckon can be useful for practicing bird shots on a subject which doesn't disappear in a flash (!). Here's one about to do something altogether unmentionable:




Maybe not the most enticing activity but a slightly different pose to the usual...

Regards

Mat

Inspired by all of the above, I had a go at a B/W version of the sixth picture:




Regards

Mat

No problem at all - it looks great in black and white!

Cheers

Mat

Tim, Martin,

Many thanks for the comments . I think 4 and 6 are my favourites - 4 because it highlights the layers which make up the rocks, and 6 because it looks a little more 'dramatic'. I'll have a play in PSE to see what 6 looks like in B&W...

Regards

Mat

Morning all,

Having spent a couple of days last week ambling around the south coast, I thought I would post some shots. The weather proved to be surprisingly good and I was quite pleased with some of the pictures I took. Would love to know what others think of these...?



















I seemed to find myself using the Sigma 10-20mm more often than not on the K-7 and all of these bar the first come from that set up.

Cheers

Mat W