2nd one is really good - I like the slightly offcentre composition and the perspective is excellent.

The church is a bit problematic - there's an unusual distortion affecting the tower which also makes it look a bit de-focussed. Also, I would remove the blue cast on the roadway, church roof, and if possible the same colour from the treetops area.

I'm now rounding off my series of building detail shots from the City of London - I've kept these last ones as a group as they're all of the same two iconic buildings near to each other.

All shot with the K7 and either Pentax 'A' 28mm f2.8 or Pentax 'M' 75-150 f4.0 zoom. All C's & C's gratefully received. Thanks for having a look ...

Many thanks again Steve, I understand then that the View option is only to offer a preview of a diffeent display ratio, to check the effect say on a widescreen monitor, but without having to actually resize the image.

I haven't been able to advance on this question yet as I have not been able to use the laptop with Photoshop installed on it for a few days. I come back to the 'aspect ratio' setting I saw though originally in the 'new document' dialogue .... still not sure how you would actually introduce an image with the pixels in a recangular format onto a new blank document? Oh well, have to keep ploughing through the Photoshop book!

Beautiful shots Alan, very striking. The one with the pier more central is my favourite - I love the frosty boards which really makes it.

The 2nd is by far the best ... fabulous close foreground interest, and beautifully laid out composition. My only suggestion would be to reverse the balance of brightness betwen the sky and reflection in the water - the sky should be a bit brighter than the reflection.

But isn't this idea just a hangover from very old advice, based on computer memory limitations from earlier times? Earlier editions of Martin Evenings comprehensive Photoshop guides dedicate a lot of space to issues like scratch memory settings and 'efficient' workflow approaches such as this cropping idea, in order to minimise the strain on your computer - and this is based on scanned TIFFs of up to about 100mb!!! Not a figure that really concerns me now with my 8gb RAM

I clearly wasn't saying you can get an 8mm field of view with a 14mm ! It was a simple point about zoom vs prime pros & cons. I see many questions here about the various wide-angle zoom options for Pentax, and not so many about the primes - I just wanted to put the case for primes, and explain something about my own consierations when I decided.

Another factor I didn't mention was the 'future-proofing' element I factored in, thinking that my next Pentax may be a 'full frame', and the Samyang 14 will offer a spectacular field of view on FF - but with the high resolution of the lens and FF sensor combination then cropping won't be much of a problem I'd imagine.

David, I agree its probably not really possible to assess the finer points of the resolution here on this forum - we'd probably have to look at the charts for that. My main point about the prime was that it offered a very strong and consistent resolution performance across the whole image circle, and the whole aperture range as well. I don't believe many zooms can match this - that was the compromise I was identifying, and contrasting that with the advantage of the variable focal length of a zoom.

Cropping is always one of the last things I do, usually on my 'master' TIFF file, and then from there I 'save as' a new JPEG, one for archive & printing, and another 'web-sized'.

Seems to me better to get all the 'major surgery' done first, only because when you make the final crop I think its best if you're seeing the exposure & colours in their finished state.

Favorite for me is the last - strong colours and composition, and I like the way the tufts make your eye wander through up towards the horizon.

That first panoramic is an impressive view - just need to find a way to control the exposure in the sky which moves towards white on both sides! Maybe some kind of graduated filter in Photoshop with the angle turned 90deg?

Half full hat on and overflowing (if that means anything )

No, we don't need any big discussion of course. I just wanted to put the case for Primes - either choice is personal, and both involve compromise. In my case, I have to walk around more to compose and focus manually. With the zooms under discussion you have AF and the extra flexibility over focal length, but I feel the IQ compromise is significant.

I fully accept that for many types of shots, such as some shown here, this may not be significant. I just make the point that for my particular use of the wide angle, I don't feel I could take that hit - I need the edge to edge resolution and consistent high resolving powerdue to the subject matter.


Here's some examples of the Samyang 14mm prime, just to balance things up , but mainly to show what I mean about the edge to edge resolution.




























Bear in mind that this is a 'Full Frame' lens, so distortions will be greater at the actual image circle edge on FF, but reports on Nikon cameras record equal resolution right up to the true edge in fact.