I'm always going on about halos as well, so I have take what I give I didn't do any actual dodging & burning (as in the specific PS tools), but I did have to pull the skies down a fair bit. The blending is a bit more obvious in 2 & 5 I guess, although the sky did brighten along the horizon.

I've always found the 18-55 WR excellent and practical. Obviously I'd have preferred to have used primes, but it wasn't hat kind of outing - the kids in the playground mainly, so for that type of thing the zoom is ideal.

I'm not able to get to the Peaks Lakes or Dales, so I have to make the most of my own 'mini mountains' down here on the Surrey / Croydon borders With a little imagination I can almost believe I'm amongst grander things here where the North Downs bisect the various valleys between Purley & Caterham. It was a rare sun-lit cold winters afternoon with the kids at the playground, but I stole away to catch the last rays over the ground and the steep hillside known as The Dobbin.

All with the K7 and DA 18-55 WR, mostly shot at about 48mm at f8.0, handheld at ISO 200.
















































This one is just really to show the wider view of the rec ground







As always, all feedback gladly received

Yes, very sharp and nicely lit - the background works well. Could you maybe pull down a bit on the blue / cyan colour channels to give a purer silver tone - there's a slight blue cast affecting this.

I think you over-emphasize the importance of camera metering as something to 'get it right' in camera - focusing I'd agree with absolutely, many would look for a camera offering faster & more accurate auto-focussing. But I'm not sure many would be spending their money on a K3 primarily expecting 'better' metering.

What is better metering anyway, in digital terms?. Your earlier posts Jules suggest you would define this as exposures that require less adjusting on the computer, and on the surface this appears logical. But I don't see it like this any more - to me camera metering is a user controlled function that you exploit at capture to best record the visible detail and dynamic range needed to produce the final image as you want - and the final general brightness, shadow and highlight values that you eventually output may bear very little relationship to the camera metered default.

A camera can only shoot one single exposure value at a time - thats one EV value, based on a grey mid tone, and around that it records higher and lower tones to the limits of the sensors DR. 'Correct' camera metering is only really about pitching that grey mid tone where you need it - in reality, on the camera, there's nothing much else you can do about it except let it get on and record it's full DR around your setpoint. You need to take control in PP to realise the scene accurately in terms of where to pitch the highs and lows, and how to draw out the 'tone curves' of contrast within different tonal zones of the image (I don't use curves myself, but it gives the idea).

So really, if an individual camera meters 1/3rd, 1/2 or 2/3rd stops differently from another, thats not significant in the scheme of things as related to the powerful control available over the image. Indeed, because of different cameras dynamic ranges varying, it may in fact be necessary to choose a different metered EV mid tone on those cameras to get what you need.

I've found Sony Movie Studio Platinum to be very flexible and powerful in its range of 'image' adjustments such as white balance. They come as a collection of 'FX', actually mini plug-ins, and its possible for third party developers to provide additional 'FX' as well. There's a comprehensive range of included adjustment plug-ins, such as white balance, exposure, contrast and 'colour correction' which allows a 360deg colour wheel adjustment individually for low mids & highs.

The plug-ins can be applied either to individual 'events' (the bits of video clips or photos you're using on the timeline), or to whole tracks, or even to whole project outputs. And the real power comes when you use the keyframe feature to apply control animation to make the effects and adjustments change to adapt to your movie - eg I have one shot moving from the kitchen with bright white lights, to the living room with low tungsten lights - I can make the White Balance adjust smoothly as the camera moves between the two.

No! Come on, we all want to know

Lovely birdy shots All look sharp and exposures and processing is all complementary. 3 & 5 are the best for me.

I think no. 6, church steeple, is great. Sure, check straightness but I'd also try to reduce the halo-type effect behind the trees which looks a bit too 'HDR' .

It could mean one thing .... or the other

Love it! The background works perfectly - makes me wonder .. is he (its a male zombie, am I right?) about to break into the aristocratic house behind him, or has he in fact just escaped from it?

Noise? Can't see any noise - it looks like a shot from my K7 at ISO 6400, clean as clean.