So, that's not the case then.

What matters more is the specific applications where you might need higher speeds. Am I right in thinking that the main limitation of a maximum sync speed is in bright conditions when you don't want to stop right down but need flash for some fill? The classic example of this would be portraits in the sunshine where you need fill flash but want a wide aperture also. We had some overexposed examples on a thread recently.

With a decent flashgun fitted you'll have HSS available, which gives a longer flash burst (or rapid bursts) to 'fill - in' for the whole duration the sensor is exposed (1/500th, 1/1000th etc), with some power loss as a consequence.

For those like me without a modern flashgun, the interesting question is why can't we have HSS on the built-in flash? We do have trailing sync, which is quite sophisticated for built in I'd have thought - why not HSS? Maybe it is to do with the available power - with a GN of 13 maybe it'd drop too much, although its mostly for fill-in purposes, so I wonder? Anyone ever wanted HSS with the built-in before?

I would add just the following point on usability - if you set AF-S mode on the camera with a manual focus lens, you will be able to use 'Catch in Focus' either pre-setting the lens focus or turning the focus ring until the camera senses focus and fires. But the only focus point that will work for this and flash red in the viewfinder will be the centre point - none of the other focus points or indicators are active.

Contrary to what Horst said just above, I don't find the M lens I have to be tedious at all - a challenge sometimes as there's an extra step or so to getting a good shot, but I enjoy the extra physicality of the process. Its takes some 'brain training' to always remember what aperture is set (you don't see it displayed on the camera) plus to always remember to 're-meter' with the green button whenever you recompose or the subject is differently lit, but I find I quite enjoy the pracical aspects of all this. And the lens handling is great.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words. I'd been 'fiddling' around with the camera settings, just trying things out, and was curious about the JPEG HDR. I was pleasantly surprised, the dynamic range seems very wide and there's no signs of 'HDR effects' as you said Smeggy.

Also I found it very easy to fine tune the WB and match it exactly with the scene using the Live View - I just picked the nearest tungsten pre-set and then applied a few steps of fine-tuning until the colours matched up.

Thanks to all of you for the encouraging feedback, glad the images came across well

I know the 31mm LTD has such a great reputation that if I had the chance thats what I would be seizing. The size makes it a special thing - both for carrying when you don't want a camera bag, plus the handling when on the camera.

Of course, f1.8 for any zoom is also special, and no doubt this Sigma is a quality item. But surely for most applications at the wider end of this range (18mm+) f2.8 would be wide enough? I'm not sure there would be that many images that would demand f1.8, or even benefit from it,at this wider end?

Traditionally such wide apertures were for the light gathering aspect, not extreme DOF, and now we can get the light gathering through higher ISO anyway.

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed them.

Thanks Alan, I appreciate that I stopped down to speed things up a bit - it makes the rides look a lot more hair-raising than they actually are!

I can see the difference there too - I don't think the PSE method has worked as well - you can see where the tones have been extracted from the branches and not all of the magenta channel has been removed.

The Lightroom examples above have dealt with the colour and fringe defects, but the issue is the highlight areas remain blown (it appears - Smeggy, what are the white values on your clouds there?) - RawTherappe looks to have managed contrast control much better, there's a smoother blend between the very bright whites and very dark under-branches, which I noticed in my own version using RT as well.

Smeggy, you mentioned the adjustment brush as an extra step to control the application of the effect - but is this tool entirely practical in this scene with so many fine intertwined branches to work with?

Enjoyed seeing this old-style 'steam fair' that came through our way last weekend - beautiful old rides and vehicles all painted in lovely muted tones. Had a job grabbing the shots with a 6 year old pulling on my arm the whole time, but thought these were worth showing.
All with the K7 and 18-55 WR.
































Also another taken at East Croydon Station, just experimenting really - this is a Camera HDR image. On the K7 the HDR can be set from the control panel, two strengths, standard or strong - this is standard. The camera actually takes three separate images, like auto brackets, so you have to have it completely stable. I could only balance it on my knee here for this. I was really interested in testing out the HDR and also the WB control.






Thanks for looking and for any feedback.

OK, I've been working on kh's file, the winter super-wide angle scene with blown clouds through the trees. A very tricky image I think.

I've carried out comparison processing in PDCU and RawTherapee.

Firstly here's the image converted in PDCU with default settings :






As can be seen the blown clouds are quite severe, and it really screws up the colours around the trees, with loads of PF all over the place.

Next, I carried out basic general adjustments and detailed highlight recovery in PDCU - the strength of the sliders ended up being mostly at maximum to get it back to what seemed a reasonably balanced exposure. In the end the white value (RGB) is 237.







But you can see despite the balanced exposure there are still plenty of issues around the tree details, with colour bleeding that I could not get under control.

Next was RawTherapee - this took a bit longer, and I used general adjustments to try and match the overall look of the PDCU version, but I activated 'High Quality' highlight recovery section, plus the 'Highlight Reconstruction' drop down. ere I experimented with the different settings, settling on 'Luminance' as the method.






In my view this has produced a far better result - there is a smoother contrast overall, and a much better blend with the recovered cloud highlights and the dark tree branches - there's far less PF and colour bleeding - a great result I think. The white value on this shot is 231.

This is why I am using RaswTherape now for this kind of more tricky image - it just seems to have this greater capability.

Here are crops of the sky areas -

1) PDCU :






2) RawTherapee :








All we need now is a Lightroom authority to see how it can cope

Thats interesting Andrew. I'll have a go with kh's file later as well. I was having trouble with some shots a few weeks ago taken from under a tree canopy (the Coombe Wood images) - could't get the blown sky right. I was lazy at RAW stage I think, and ended up using a magic wand selection then levels in PS Elements to pull the highs down and add blue, but it wasn't successful.

The limitation with a converter, such as in RT, is there's no way to select tiny specks of similar tone through a darker one (like trees), so you get some bleed off of the recovery into the darker areas as well, and colour shifts as you guys were talking about above.

But there's that slider just under the 'Amount' for controlling the extent of the effect in terms of brightness value - maybe that could do it? Its kind of like a selection too.