South Bank and other areas in what should be a quiet London on the 27th, somewhere near Uttoxeter & Oxford on the 28th and I've no idea for the rest. Might go over to the local Nature Reserve on the 25th if there is a hint of decent light.

At the risk of publicising oneself, this might help link

I've done this a few times. It is much more difficult with a prime than I imagined - I took the 35mm f/2.8 out (hired from SRS) and found it restrictive at first, but as others have said, it forces you to think more about composition.

The last time I did a one-lens outing was with the 10-17mm fish-eye. One of the shots got exhibited at Photokina, so I'm going to try it more often!

As Mannesty suggested, the DA* 16-50mm is very good for this kind of work - and it's weather-proof as well.

I've had mine about 18 months and it is now my "default" lens.

I really like the cannon!

I've had the 10-17mm for a few years but have used it rarely. I did take it out for a day recently and forced myself to use it - it was the only lens I had with me so it "had" to work. As greynolds999 said, "you need to learn to see fisheye"; it really does make a difference.

Try getting amongst some tall buildings, plant the camera at low level on it's back and take a shot or two - I did that and got a shot displayed at Photokina in September.

I like to look at Fisheye work, but I don't like looking at it all day long - it should be a rare treat.

FWIW my first foray into paid-for photo software was PSE4. I would probably still be using that if it was compatible with later OS than Win XP. Elements 7 was a necessary purchase, but since being talked into trying Lightroom 4 earlier this year, I've not used Elements at all.

Don't forget, pretty much all Adobe software is free to try for 30 days.

Hi all

I recently entered the Ilford Imaging competition that they have been running monthly on Flickr, mainly for a bit of fun. I got a response which said I'd gained "highly commended" for one of my 3 images, and not one of the two I thought it might be. More on the back-story here www.raybonline.com/MJEntry20.html

I've had confirmation this afternoon that the image IS being displayed on their stand at the exhibition, printed large! I hope that they've taken care to give Pentax a mention, too.

It might not be big news in the scheme of things, but I'm well chuffed! If anyone is going to the show, you are able to vote for your favourite image (hint)

HDR is something I tried once and gave up on. However, having seen this, I'm going to give it another go.

Nice image, John.

Stranger things have happened...

Thanks for the invite, Stan, I might do just that.

Don't know if this will help, but I was forced into an upgrade recently when my Intel board failed.

I opted for the following;

AS-Rock A75M board
AMD Liano A6-3670 2.7Ghz Quad
8GB RAM
Win 7 Pro 64

£245 ex.VAT

I re-used the graphics card from the previous machine. Whilst the above specs are not cutting edge, it can run HD TV and LR4 simultaneously without any loss of performance. If the most work you'll make it do is LR4, you won't need the graphics card, as the on-board is more than capable of handling it.