au contraire

They may have a smaller window of opportunity, but at least they wont freeze whilst taking photos !
I think someone in Perth, Australia will have more time to get the right shot than someone in Perth, Scotland who will be battling freezing batteries & the onset of frostbite !

Unfortunately (for us consumers) Wacom have a huge market share, but for good reason. I'd suggest he gets the best Wacom he can afford if he's serious about the hobby.

You could always make his year & buy him a Wacom Cintiq 12wx (check out Youtube, looks alot of fun, but a bit of overkill ! )

You can view listings that have ended on ebay. Using this I found one sold for £40 but it had a vertical grip. A grip on its own sold for £25, so on that basis, about £15.

Lovely composition. Nice silky graduated background colour. Could do with a bit of a sharpen though

How many of you use a graphics tablet ? I think it will take some time to master.

I treated myself to a Wacom Intuos 3 today (whilst I was looking for a 10-17 mm). I'm trying to use it for everything at the moment. In fact I'm using it right now with the Handwriting recognition software & how it can fathom out my spider scribble is simply amazing. I'm slowly getting used to it + hope to do some extreme photoshopping + digital art when its raining & I can't go out to take photos. (I'll apologise to the purists in advance !) It does make intricate work in Photoshop much, much easier though.
Not sure I needed the intuos over the bamboo, but wanted a 16:9 format to match my monitor.

I managed to find a fisheye in another shop, so I now have 2 toys to play with + learn to use. First attempt is my Avatar here (start small I say) 80x80 what do you think ? excusing my ugly mug of course !

I hope you got your $'s during the summer, the exchange rate is a Killer at the moment. I'm looking forward to seeing some real nice fishy shots. I treated myself to the 10-17 today' but haven't had a chance to use it in anger yet.

Have fun !

I prefer the mono as the chroma noise effect is neutralised, leaving a more film grain-like effect.

Is a Trannie scanner a bit like Gaydar ?

Just looks noisy to me. Am I missing something ?

The LX3's getting a good following.

Would be nice to see the LX3 @ 24mm compared to the K20d ~ 16mm (24 equiv) - I doubt there would be any quality difference at this size but would be useful to compare the metering & dynamic range.