Gentlemen,

while I understand your emotional attachement to your tools (i.e. Internet browsers) you strayed a bit from the original topic.

May I shout: ORDER!!!

BTW: I'm using Firefox at home and Netscape at work.

Has anyone submitted shots to the Pentax Photo Gallery? (I tried the search but it didn't come up with anything)
It's in beta state currently but you can submit shots and 'they' choose some for the gallery. Have a look at
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/index-flash.jsp
If you want to take part, send an email to photogallery at pentax dot com stating your interest. They then will send you an invite.

First round I submitted 8 pictures and got 3 in.

Prieni

This is one of the first shots in daylight that I did with my Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro. It's shot at f4.5 and 85 mm. Some people say it is too soft, can't really say that on this shot (but then, it's on the short end):

Thanks Neil, I might do just that...

Prieni

John, I agree! I only posted this to show the 'raw' effect of the local equalisation.

Thanks all for your kind words.

Tim,
yes, local equalisation is the name of the Corel function. Unfortunately I haven't found anything like it in PS. I tried a plug-in that does something similar but in another way. I can't quite figure out how local equalisation works exactly. The only parameter that you have is the height/width of the equalisation and the plug-in seems not to be as strong in the effect.
On the star, I usually prefer the stars from the Sigma 105 (makes a good effect on lighthouses, for example) but here I think the 70-300 star looks quite good.

George,
you're right, the second one does look artificial (you should have seen the sky before masking it out!) but in this case I find it quit fitting. I did want to bring out the structure of the dilapidated facade a bit more. The first one also doesn't look natural, only it is a bit more difficult, I guess, to put the finger on what happened with it. When I first saw it I thought it's almost b/w, but if you convert it you see that the tone does make a difference.

Before I got PS I only worked in PhotoPaint and here is an old shot where I used the local equalisation without any other layers (apart from blurring the background and masking). So if you have an idea of how to create this effect in PS I would be eager to know...

This one is a scan from a slide, so I don't remember any particulars:

John,
you might be right there. Also I had to coax out the structure of the stones. As it was shot against the light the stones were quite dark and not much structure to be seen. I'm experimenting a bit with the Corel PhotoPaint function for local equalization. That can add quite a bit of structure when used with layer blending on the original.
This is another example where I used this method:
Pentax *istD, FA J 18-35 mm, 1/180 s, A11, ISO 200.

This is a shot I took last weekend, only came round to give it some postprocessing this weekend. I don't know exactly why, but I like it a lot.

Pentax *istD, Sigma 70-300, 4-5.6 APO DG @ 150 mm, 1/250 s, f/11, ISO 200.



Cheers,
Prieni

John,
while it's true that the eye is capable of remarkable things a lot of our vision capabilit is down to post-processing (see the parallel to modern digital cameras!).
Here's a snippet I found on the WEB, vaguely remembering the story from un iversity:

Helmholtz, in his 1868 study of human vision, concluded that the eye is really a very imperfect organ, listing numerous "design" flaws -- indeed, he went so far as to say that if an optician tried to sell him such an instrument he would give it back!

Had to answer NO, as I don't own a 16-45
But now I might replace my 18-35 kit lens. Good job I did go for a tele zoom first...

Prieni