Excellent quality, wouldn't have through they were manual focus through glass. Especially the 2nd one.

Don't mind in the slightest, all comments and thoughts always appreciated.

The issue I have with your crop is the dark area to the top and the right of the owl, I think you need something there to stop your eye leaving the picture at the edge.

I have come to the conclusion that a crop is needed somewhere though.

Thanks for the comments, good food for thought.

I think my screen needs calibrating if two of you think the Owl exposure is about right, its quite dark on mine.

I'll be printing it anyway so I can get the exposure right then, I always do a 6x4 test print to get these things right.

And you're quite right Mike that is a lovely door, I love photographing grot and decay as well.

Something doesn't quite look right to me, but I can't work out what it is.
Maybe the owl needs brightening?

Owls are just so nice looking...

Not for a competition this time, just because..

Chris

I cannot tell a lie - it was taken at the Mid Wales Falconry Centre - link

A great bunch of people, who really seem to care for the birds welfare.

With regards to the 'improved' camera, I'm happy with the GX10 and I produce good A3 prints from it but the GX20 came along at the right price.
(By the way the reason I have now 2 Samsung bodies rather than Pentax is purely the price differential at the time I bought them - it gives me more money for glass).

Martin.

Thanks for explaining that, as I didn't really know that, but it would explain things.

I have used - often overused - Photokit Sharpener for some time in PS, as it can give that extra little bit of bite to a print or image.

Thanks for all the comments, I shall now put in some work based on them.

For Mike I used Lightroom (so same ACR engine as PS), with its standard capture sharpening settings, and didn't even take it into PS did a straight export from LR with standard sharpen for screen settings.

There is a tiny amount of depth of field which - fortunately - is centred around the owls beak.

This was taken on a GX10. I now have a Jacobs £299 special GX20 and can't wait to see the (hopefully) improved results from that.

Thanks to all those who helped me on my last competition entry which I won - I owe you a virtual beer

This is one of my next competition entries. I have so far done some basic tonal adjustment and lightened the eyes slightly. I don't know whether to tone the background down a little?

Comments appreciated. (competition subject is totally open).

Also I also shall be entering the one in my gallery of the woman with the red hat titled Modesty, although I can't post it in a thread for comments any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for all your helpful comments on my competition entry. I took many of them on board and the final image I entered is below (was entered as a projected image at 1400x1050, this is a reduced version).

There were 63 images in my section, I was the only author using Pentax equipment, and I got ....... 1st Place

I'll definitely get you all to comment on my future images, thanks again.