Ammonyte was correct in identifying my lights as Lumicycle ones. If I recall correctly the battery is made up from a number of 1.2v tagged AA cells combined to give 13.2v to over-volt the 12v bulbs that are used. I know quite a few folks that have made up replacement batteries themselves at low cost.

The lights I use for my mountain bike use two halogen lamps and a fairly powerful 13.2v NiMH batter. I usually run it with a 20W flood and a 12W spot however with a single 35W it'd give about 1 hour or so of runtime and is pretty bright.

They cost about £150 however I've seen some stuff on the web where people have been building equivalent sets themselves for much less.

Art is clearly in the eye of the beholder because, to my eye at least, I think those bullfighting shots are absolute rubbish.

I've found the book pretty useful so far and probably the tip I've liked most is using unsharp mask with a large radius to adjust contrast.

I left for work an hour early this morning to get a few pictures on my way to work as the light was quite nice. Here's one that I like:


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Well that's a good enough recommendation for me so I've ordered the book!

Thanks again
Steve

Thanks again Matt. Here's the latest version with the light area fixed.

Here's one I'm still working on. This is the original colour shot:




There are a few problems with it:

Wonky horizon - a problem I often have
A light leak at the top and bottom. I think this film was shot and left unprocessed for several years - a shame because there are some good (for me anyway!) shots on it.

With the horizon fixed in Photoshop, cropped and converted to B&W it now looks like this:




I still need to sort out the remaining light patch at the top left corner, and I've yet to decide whether to leave the grain - even so I already like to result.

George - thanks for that. Matt is miles better at this sort of thing than I am, however I've already learned a lot from this thread and the IR one.

I'm using Elements 4 on my home PC but for the last few conversions I've been using a trial install of CS2 on my office PC. I'm finding CS2 is way better for B&W conversions, so much so that I'm now considering buying a full copy.

I'm still practising however I think my B&W conversions are getting better. A few I've just done are on my Black & White page at:

http://www.pbase.com/niblue

Thanks for that Matt - that's very interesting. Your version still has plenty of impact but without losing some of the shadow detail which happened in my version. Mine looks a bit harsh by comparison as well.

I'll follow your instructions and see how I get on!

Cheers
Steve