Some rough edits from a shoot this afternoon with the 'tasty' DA50-135mm (and a few with the Tamron 17-50mm. A zombie themed shoot for a local make-up artist.

Expertly lit, but for me you have gilded the lily twice over - first with the face-smoothing which leaves her with little skin texture, and second on the framing effect. Sorry Don! It shows great skill, way beyond what I could do, but nevertheless I don't think it quite works.

Really like the first two especially the second. I actually like the 'mystery' of the deep black shadows!

Oooh, smashing set! Good light and nice use of the door as a background. Looks like they were lining up for you!

Taking this lens out for a spin this afternoon.

Looks like torture but nice pics! I like the last one, nice light. The first one of Paul Baker is good too but there's something about his expression.... I half expect the back of a lady's head to pop up at the bottom of the shot!

For me, more directional and less uniform light would have worked better. You could vignette it a bit in PS, but I'd prefer to see a pool of light grazing across the objects, giving a more 3D effect.

Suggest you let us know how you get on with it, since you already bought it ;P

+1000

I dislike artificially done frames, but I can see what your thinking was, since the image is quite painterly.

I really do like the composition - the wooden circle, with the path curving round it nicely. Everything is very well balanced compositionally. Nice colours too.

My chinese triggers go up to 1/180.

I think a lot of the limitation comes down to the shutter mechanism. Higher than 1/200 and you might start to get black bands from the sutter.

Interestingly some compact cameras with electronic shutters have no such restriction. The Olympus XZ2 for example. Which is why it is frustrating that Pentax released the MX1 without a flippin' hot shoe - because in all other respects it's an XZ2 clone!

Edit - you have the option of HSS on PTTL capable flashguns of course.