tobinobin, you're quite at liberty to prefer anyone you like.

Unfortunately I was limited for colourful subject matter on that day to what I found in my back garden. So the daffodil just had to be included.

Stuey. Glad you like them

I can definitely recommend the Cactus V5.

Thanks for the comment.
The 'tree and fern' picture was purely by accident. I took several shots of the daffodil head and accidentally loosened the tripod head too much. The camera tilted downwards and happened to frame this almost exactly. I had Liveview on and noticed it, recomposed it and hand held the flash and diffuser in different positions until I found the best angle. This was straight from the camera just saved as a jpg via PSE. I love the colours and texture in the wood.
It was bloody cold. I need to find some gloves with a single finger and thumb tip missing. It took and hour for my hands to warm up.

Try out my new macro 100mm, Cactus triggers and Gary Fong diffuser in the back garden:













It was snowing, blowing and bl**dy freezing so I naturally went down the beach to see just how rough it was:




Taken with DA*16-50, polariser and 0.6 ND Grad

After getting wet feet, a sandy tripod, spray covered filters and even colder I beat a retreat to the warmth of home.

Enjoy

I have treated myself to the Gary Fong Lightsphere Pro kit. Having watched many of his videos I decided to take a gamble and see if it really was any good or just 'too good to be true'.

I ordered it from ebay (Israel would you believe!) on the 20th and it arrived yesterday (27th).

The kit looks interesting and the instructions are fairly straightforward. I haven't had much chance to try out the Lightsphere but I have been playing with the Powersnoot. This fits over the flash head and produces a narrow concentrated beam for point/spot lighting a subject.

I thought it was about time that I had a decent avatar showing off my new Pentax and so, after about an hour and a lot of adjustments I achieved this:




I sat, backwards, on the chair and used the 'Powersnoot' mounted on an AF540FGZ on manual at 1/16 power. This was mounted on a Cactus V5 flash trigger on my tripod. Posing in front of the mirror I used the 16-50 with the camera on 1/80, f4 and ISO 80. (And before you ask, yes it was taken with the camera in my hand )

This was in my Premier Inn hotel room where the the walls are all cream-ish and all the room lights were on in the background. All I have done is straightened the image, cropped it and adjusted the levels. I did have to brush out a slight bit of lightness in the background and I ran the brush around the edge to soften the corners in PSE.

Apart from the subject matter I am actually quite impressed with this for a first attempt. I am travelling down to see my Granddaughter this weekend, who loves to have her picture taken, so I am hoping to test it out. I shall post my attempts next week.

Flash arrived today well packaged and exactly as described.
Thank you for a smooth transaction.

Then we shall have to agree to disagree then

Based on several online reviews, I have just bought a set of Cactus V5. Ordered from Gadget Infinity on the 20th and arrived yesterday (25th). I ordered 2 twin packs at a total cost of $143.90 (£95.82).
I had a quick play with them last night and they are simple to set up and operate. They have a nice quality feel about them despite the price. I especially like the fact that each unit can act as a transmitter or receiver. This means if the transmitter fails you can always reassign one of the others in its place.

I used them with a K5iis, a FGZ540 and a FGZ 360. All on manual. I tried putting one flash in the hotel bathroom with the door almost shut and it still fired.

The only criticism is the tripod mounting points are too close to the hotshoe and foul the QR plate and the hotshoe 'lock ring' is fiddly to operate well.

Mini Rant warning

In magazines and forums I read comments like this and I feel that the term HDR is in danger of being 'hijacked' to always refer to an image that has been manipulated to the extremes.

An HDR 'enhanced' image can mean everything from a subtle modifications to lighten shadows and reduce blown out highlights to the full 'cartoon' style, brightly coloured style that (I think) Smeggy is referring to. The mono version of the alleyway is still an HDR image it's just in greyscale rather than colour.

Looking at this image from the HDR Wikipedia page:




It is colour and it also covers a high dynamic range but I wouldn't refer to it as overly done.

Mini rant over

The inner docks photo has been pushed a bit but still gives a pleasant image to look at. Just making it mono would not reduce the dynamic range it would just remove the colour. Whether it would be a better image or not is 'in the eye of the beholder'. Personnally I like the colour version, a B&W version would add a 'classy' edge (as Smeggy suggests).

The colour alleyway image has used 'just enough' enhancement (IMHO) to add to its grittyness and show the contrast between the dark walls and bright sky whilst still retaining a feeling of reality.

Nicely done.

I love 1 and 2 in your second posting. The colour version (2) just beats the B&W version (3) IMHO..

I think the post spoils the overall effect of 4 and would be better if it was cropped above this to give an uncluttered 'lead in'.

5&6 don't do anything for me I'm afraid.

I do like the minimal HDR effect as this still leaves a good degree of 'realism' in the image.