Deffo the first deal. You could put the difference toward a slightly better telephoto zoom.

A sad waste.

I think the OP is mainly talking about the gallery in fact, where I do see a bit of what he describes. I see it as pretty harmless to be honest. If people want to do that, why should it bother me? This is a hobby site not a boot camp. If they want appraisal, they can post in Your Photos requesting c&c. We're all pretty united that c&c should be honest, but reasonably tactful.

Could it just be that the OP has a life outside the forum, and has forgotten!

You could use Av or Sv mode and raise the iso yourself, or Tav mode and let the camera raise the iso as much as is needed? As you say with the flash not popped up, it's always off.

'What is 1/3 of infinity' - this is precisely why the rule is so conservative and errs heavily on the side of caution. It's for deep focus landscape shots. Who would ever use this for portraits? I'm usually more worried about too much dof there, not too little.

In practice we can start with the 3rd rule, then check the results and refine as needed. That's a bumbling way of working but one that comes more naturally to me than doing calculations etc.

If i've read the article correctly, the third rule will result in too conservative (too FAR) a hyperfocal distance. However this is better than merely focussing on or near infinity, and definitely better than focussing too close. The more perfect you want your hyperfocal distance to be, the more care and precision you would need to take or you might end up focusing too close. That would mean charts and calculations which wouldn't be appropriate for most of up in the field. Therefore as a belt and braces 'rule of thumb' approach, it still seems to be more than reasonable.

The great thing about photography is it's subjective, so there's room for everyone to have their own opinions.

No matter how misguided and *just plain wrong* they might be

It must be a 'taste' thing because I find Thomas's version about a million times better... the other one is just a boring macro with nothing much to please my eye, Thomas's shot describes so much more about the structure of the creature's mouthparts and and eyes

I'm surprised you don't like his shots Smeggy, as his verging-on-HDR-ish post processing resembles your own in some ways, like the shot of the chap in sunglasses you just posted on the other thread, in terms of super-sharp detail and contrast.

I know where Smeggy's coming from on this. There's a distinction between enhancing a shot through levels work in PP and cloning out elements of the scene. A scenario I wouldn't like is if someone took a landscape shot and then started prettifying it by removing pylons etc - i.e. eliminating all traces of modern life to make it fit with their notion of what a nice landscape should be. Embrace the pylons or just don't take the shot!

However there are shots like this one of Iggy (who reminds me of the old woman from ITV's Benidorm here) where the background detail adds nothing and is hard to make out, so I see no harm in cloning.... But a better idea would have been to scoot round so the background guy becomes a more positive part of the shot.

Anyway... nice shots Bob, especially your wife in the 2nd version... good to see you posting again!

'Baby blue eyes' would be another good title! Great capture. I came across one of these stuck on a Sundew plant a few weeks ago. I didn't have a macro lens with me, of course!