Two very different lenses for different purposes. The Sigma has more utility to me since it's faster, but if small size or WR were more important, I'd go for the DA Ltd. The new DA Ltd will also make Pentax DSLRs look really great, since the lens has a classic look about it.

Re banding - is this something that might be there in your image but perhaps looks more prominent in the print? To get rid of it I will blur the sky (where it usually appears) and apply some very slight grain/noise in Photoshop.

Glad you are enjoying playing around with your flash!

I have the AF280T, a nice flash and a bit less unwieldy. The low power setting is handy if you want to use additional slave flashes. There are a couple of auto modes which *will* work on a DSLR; you just set the aperture on the camera to one of two settings, and then choose one of the two auto modes (green and blue mode I think). However I would still recommend manual for consistent, predictable results.

But you would lose the drama of the beautiful back lit rim lighting in the original shot. There's much more to photography than producing a faithful interpretation of what the eye sees. Although I don't see the original as 'unnatural'.

What landowners do not realise is that the public have a strong attachment to land they have walked for most of their lives. Something similar to a sense of ownership. When you know the land like the back of your hand - that cluster of trees where you sheltered from the rain, the rocks where you played as a child. Places where you wandered freely.

Then a new landowner, with no emotional attachment to the land other than he now 'owns' it, comes on the scene with 'Keep Out' signs, and accosts you and tells you 'how would you like it if I wandered through your garden?' Completely unproductive land with me causing no damage at all. This is another situation I found myself in. The landowner chopped down the trees and cleared the (probably glacial) rocks with a bulldozer. To create a large lawn for the new house he built - a huge pile with a helipad on the roof which was described in the planning permission as 'an agricultural workers cottage'.

That's right, I have little sympathy for landowners who are not sympathetic to the land they own and the people who loved it before they came along.

I would confine this to situations where there was a prior precedent for public access, so that wouldn't include the river that runs through your garden (unless it was land previously used by the public which you 'grabbed' and fenced off and domesticated). When it comes to new farmland and woodland which I do not know, I keep to the paths of course.

Bless their hearts for making CS2 a free download. Coupled with a decent more up-to-date free RAW converter I have no need of this 'Creative Cloud' annoyance.

Algi, i was merely trying to show the effect of a projected image which is projected over the subject. I'm not going to comment on the examples of digital art you linked to... That twee sickly sort of stuff really makes me gag.

I don't think the DAltd is head and shoulders above the DA35/2.4 (except in terms of build quality!) It's slightly sharper and more contrasty perhaps. But not 'head and shoulders' better.

The DA35/2.4 is excellent value, and FF compatible, if you have a suitable SLR to mount it on.

On PZ-70, Ektar100 film, wide open:

Algi you can project from whatever angle you please, think of it like a Gobo, not a system for 'photorealistic backgrounds'.

Excuse me for direct linking an image from the Lightblaster website, but it's apparently the only way of getting the point across.




People have been experimenting with OHPs, slide projectors and digital projectors for ages. The lighblaster does a similar job but is portable, cheap and uses the much brighter light of a strobe. Is it a bit of a gimmick? Maybe, but it's a simple and cheap piece of kit and very effective.

+1

And sometimes an image is a bit boring or commonplace, albeit with nothing overtly wrong with it, that we don't really have anything to add. A lack of comments in itself ought to tell you something.

If you really want comments/C&C the best way is to start a thread in Your Photos... if you don't get much of a response it would probably be OK to bump the thread until you do. People are less forthcoming in the gallery since there's an expectation that people are posting work they are particularly happy with, so the prevailing attitude seems to be if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all (unless it's just a minor suggestion)....