came across these in our local wood yesterday, does anyone have any idea what they are called?

that,s a start, no Nigel i set "catch in focus" on, the lens focus point was at whatever and while holding the fire button down adjusted the converter to obtain focus to fire the camera, probably the same as moving the camera to the subject. i will be a bit more scientific next time and have a look at what the lens and converter ended up at,just glad to get something. i did do some test shots to find aperture and iso settings to give a decent shutter speed in the conditions i was working in as after the first few as i felt my speed was too slow and the results were not that good.

these are from my first attempt at using this facility, they were taken on our local National Nature Reserve also designated an SSI area. it was fine but there was a breeze moving the plants and grasses at times.
the equipment was K5+Teleplus x2 macro converter+ FA50mm f1.7, adjusting the converter to obtain focus. don,t know what the names are, will have to treat myself to a book.
















as it is my first attempt would appreciate c&c,thanks

i can beat that and i remember it at this price

apologies for being image heavy but it is for illustration of the process being discussed

single exposure CS5,shadows/highlights,unsharp mask, save as jpg




5 exposure with Exposure fusion in Photomatix




and 5 exposure Tonemapped backed off a tad with hue/saturation in photoshop




all shot with DA15mm limited, so all needed some straightening,in fact the 1st one still needs some i have just noticed, but no acid trip colours that i can see. just did it for the fun of it.
do we NEED HDR maybe ,maybe not but it is always nice to have options to play with, you could even do things like this:-

thanks for the replies and suggestions, it seems it is a case of you cannot please everybody , i personally think a great big thing across the middle of the image looks terrible no matter how translucent it is, i suppose low resolution files around 72ppi would be a reasonable deterent, it seems to be the norm with most of the tutorials etc i have seen and it strikes me the watermark ends up more an advert than protection.
again thanks fo the help

have the opportunity to have a web site so have looked at watermarking. the problem is where to put it, have looked and quite a few that go across the middle of the image but even semi transparent it spoils the view of the image completely. what would be the best alternative, if there is one?

download Exposure Plot just load a folder,full of images and you will have a bar graph of focal length,aperture,shutter speed and iso for the whole lot. excellent little tool. dont forget to set actual focal length as your requirement.

sorry got that wrong, that is what downloading 2 lots of software at once and age do

somebody brought up LightZone the other day, that is subscrption based as well now but at least it is only $33 a year. at the moment