Please, I'm all ears.

Well Bilbo is at least

I tried getting him to stand still with food but he scoffed it down before I could focus and ran off again.

Here are the pictures:

White balance correction and noise reduction only, nothing else touched. Well, standard sharpening...

All Shot:
K10D
SMC-A 50mm 1:1.7
1/40
f1.7
ISO800
RAW-PEF -> JPEG 80% in PP


Catch me if you can!






Not this time. *boing*






Hold on there is something over there...


He was standing by the table leg (which is in focus).




Mmm... Doorframe...






Ok, you can have ONE shot.


I know it is a little soft (or out of focus )

Links to:

Original Shot:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tyr.francoperlak/TestShots/photo#5097465116007666098

WB Corrected with VPN:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tyr.francoperlak/TestShots/photo#5097465111712698786


I managed to sneak one more in

I'm King of the hill!

I was hoping to post some pictures of Bilbo, our chinchilla, that I was shooting last night. I was shooting at ISO800 with my A50f1.7, which was very difficult to say the least.

I was pleased with a few shots and I think as a sequence some of the out of focus shots actually add to the 'story'. He will sit still sometimes but seems to be determined to not stop moving as soon as a camera is in the room. He absolutely hates the flash, which I can understand, I hate it too. Shooting wide open didn't help getting a nice sharp picture because the DoF is so shallow.

Anyway, I was shooting in very yellow, verging on orange incandescent light. I had hoped that shooting RAW would be fine for white balance, as it normally is. Loading my pictures onto the computer today, all looked fine until...


I set the white balance and lovely blue noise lines were streaked all over my photos. In a moment of panic I thought I'd wasted my time or would have to post them with a strong colour cast from the light.

I had not played with the new noise reduction in Lightroom 1.1 yet so I thought it might get rid of some of the lines. I was rather surprised to find it virtually eliminated any vertical pattern noise. If you look really closely 100% you can see that there are some lightly blueish patterns in part of the image but no visible patterning. I'm very pleased with this and will try shooting ISO1600 to see if I can correct that too.

Anyway, I'm batch processing the pictures, working on exporting them and uploading them. I'll edit the title when the pictures are ready.

May post a single before and after set so you can see the improvement.

Apparently sticking the *ist focusing screen into the K10D fixes the problem. I assume it actually transfers the problem to the *ist if you put the K10D focusing screen in there...

The kit lens is much better than I first thought, where it falls down for landscapes is the corners are soft when set wide. The 16-45 is much better in this respect. the 16-45 has a constant aperture which is handy and the 16-45 is wider, but not as long. Finally, resolution characteristics are more even than the 18-55.

I got an A28f2.8 and I must say it is very good. Sadly the test shot I took was not very good but, even wide open it seems to be pretty sharp.

How big?

Looks almost tarantula like...

I'd print at least A3 (equivalent) so it can be viewed from a distance.

I'll just wait a while I think. Just found a shop in York that specialises in Samsung gear. Got to try out the 100mm f2.8 macro and the 10-17mm fish eye. They are both such tiny lenses!!!

Really depends on the weather, last year was rather dismal. Gale force winds and a lot of clouds/rain up high.

I'm hoping it will be better, but even then a good telephoto can isolate a section of landscape.