Recently bought a DA 35mm 2.8 Ltd to have a go at some macro, the 40mm will probably see less use now and I need to sell to fund the 35mm. Its in reasonable condition, has a few light marks from use, but works perfectly and the image quality is excellent. Looking for £145 including RMSD.










The dust looks a lot worse on the images, should have switched the K3's AA filter simulator on

3 and 6 are great, I watched the Vulcan for across the water in Lytham, but it was a bit hazy for a good view, still nice to see again though before it retires.

Back on the laptop now so here is the before and after, I modified the after to remove the graduated filter as some suggested

Before:



After:



I also had a very quick go on Topaz lens effects, this took about 5 mins building the depth map, it would take more time to get it right cos his ear is obviously at the wrong depth, but as a quick first go I'm quite impressed with lens effects.

Thanks, I remember an email from them adversing it, I'll definitely give the trial ago, then wait til its on offer (Topaz usually have very good Cyber Monday offers)

Nigel, I find the latest versions of Remask very good, but it is made a whole lot easier with a touchscreen. I drew a fairly thin compute line around my son with pen on the screen, its much easier to be accurate drawing it on rather than using the mouse or trackpad, hence I'm able to use a thinner compute line and more accurate keep and discard areas. I guess this gives remask less leeway for error in its mask computations.

Thanks for all the comments, as mentioned by davidwozere, Mum, Granny's etc. liked and didn't notice the photoshopping.

I forgot to say in the steps I did in photoshop, there is the original background layer too. and I used a graduated filter mask to try and simulate that focal plane fading out, I've got it saved in PSD, so I'll try removing/moving the filter to see if it looks better. I messed for a while with the amount of blur and settled on the amount because of the red tail lights behind his head, with less blur they were still fairly distinctive red blobs.

,

I do intend to post a before/after later when I'm on my laptop. I wanted to post it without first to see if people thought the photoshopping was too obvious.

It was my sons first day at school today, I took a few pictures of him with his pristine school uniform before it is glued and painted etc. Due to the excitement, rush, emotional wife etc, the best smile I got was when he was positioned in front of the car across the road, making the background more distracting than I'd like. Also I'd not has time to swap lens so was using the 18-135 at F8 so DOF was quite wide. So this evening I set to work with topaz remask and photoshop to try and soften the background. I made a layer with my son cut out, and another layer with my son cut out of the background, I then used a Gaussian blur on the background, but found that the transparency from the cut out affected the blur, so I had to fill the background by cloning the edges into the transparent area. Having spent the best part of an hour doing all this, its obvious to me what I've done and I think it looks a bit cardboard cutout (not helped by the fact he was a bit backlit)

My question is, looking at this without seeing the original, or knowing where all the seems are, does it look un-natural?

I'd disagree slightly that editing is that much better on large desktop, why because the pixel density is much higher on a smaller screen so thing look sharper, plus you sit a lot closer to the screen so can still see as much detail. If anything I prefer my 13.3 to the 23" IPS monitor I used to use, because it looks sharper, especially if zooming in to 100%

However that is why I recommend FULL HD, not just HD ready, There just is not enough space for lightroom on a 780p screen, by the time all the toolbars are in place the photo has very little area left, also the pixel density is not as good. I nearly used this reckoning to buy a HP Spectre x360 with a QHD screen, but financial reality hit home

I recently bought a Dell 7000 series 2 in 1 13.3 inch laptop and am running windows 10 and lightroom 6. It cost £570 from Dell Outlet and has an i7 processor, 256gb SSD, and 8gb of RAM, its plenty quick enough for lightroom

link

I'd say the most important thing to look for are the in this order:

1. Full HD IPS screen (the advantage of 2 in 1/convertible laptops as they generally have IPS screen panels so they can be used at angles). A lot of laptop screens as you mentioned are awful.

2. A Solid state drive, its just so much quicker, i'd rather compromise on disc space and have to keep clearing it out than go back to a mechanical drive. Having said that 128gb would be the smallest i'd go to, I got 256.

3. RAM ideally 8gb or more, often you cant expand this on a laptop, so you need it up front.

The other thing worth looking for is an active digitiser in the screen, the dell 7000 has one. it means I can use the Dell active stylus for brushes in lightroom/Photoshop, with pressure sensitivity and importantly if leaning on the screen when in tablet mode, palm rejection, i.e.. you can draw like you would on a paper notebook.

Ahh right so its more to do with the focal length and point of focus, I'm safe to carry on doing sunsets with a DA15 them

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm confused by all the warnings about looking at and photographing the sun. How is the eclipse any different to looking at or shooting a sunset, or sunny day on the beach?
And if shooting the sun can damage your camera, why do lens reviewers do just that to test for flare?