The first one looks a bit phallic to me. The third one is lovely with the backlight to the leaf. I like the idea of the last one but I would have had the foreground trees in focus and tried to avoid the object in the lower right corner.

Best wishes, Kris.

Colours: these are a result of my on-going struggle to get Lightroom 3 beta 2 to do what I am used to with Lightroom 1.4. Obviously they can be tweaked and adjusted to one's heart's content as I have the original RAW file. The issue appears to be that the graduated filter function isn't just balancing out the dynamic range but is messing around with the colour too. I probably need to make several virtual copies and compare them on a decent monitor rather than my laptop in less than ideal light. I am beginning to feel the need of a set of Lee ND grads.

Range of tones. I shot to the right which prevented blown highlights but has meant that I have to lighten up the foreground but Lightroom 3's noise reduction is rather good so that is not an issue.

The tree: I hate it central too, but sheep are sheep and go where they damn please and so it was shoot as is or forget it (which might be the answer of course ). Clutter around me (a barbed wire fence, a roller, a water tank etc.) prevented much in the way of alternatives.

Sheep: see above.

Appeal: I don't think this is great art (hence the title) it just made me laugh that a flock of sheep ran across the field when they saw me then stood there in bemusement when I didn't start dishing out sheep nuts. The appeal to me, at least, is it makes me chuckle.

Grass and straw: I hadn't even really noticed it!

Offence: absolutely none taken.

Best wishes, Kris.

Yes, but using a polariser on an extreme wide angle will give you weird results because (if I remember rightly) the light on one side of the image is going to be at a different angle to the light at the other side of the frame.

K.

Looking at the picture, what is it you are after reproducing? The fish-eye will give much more curved edges than that picture (I think... I haven't used one, but going by images posted here), the 12-24 is very nicely corrected and won't give you such curved edges, the 16-50 does have barrel distortion but isn't nearly so wide... Perhaps you could use the 12-24 to get the wide view and then distort it a bit in PP?

K.

Some more of the locals. S-M-C Takumar 28mm f/3.5 on a K20D, polariser, Lightroom 3 beta 2.




Best wishes, Kris.

The last crop is excellent. K.

Something like this?




Best wishes, Kris.

Another attempt at the same scene. This time, the FA43 with a polariser, and hopefully I haven't over-cooked the saturation in Lightroom.




Best wishes, Kris.

The screw drive coupling not rotating on the lens is perfectly normal for Pentax "quick shift" lenses. The gearing between the focus ring and the rest of the focusing mechanism is such that manual focus is not transmitted back to the body and the screw drive motor. Other lenses without quick shift have to be put into manual (either on the body or the lens) when focusing the old fashioned way otherwise the motor can be damaged.

I doubt the focusing system is your problem and it seems likely a trip to the repair man is called for.

Best wishes, Kris.

Here is a question for you all.

Old Uncle Fred dies and you get to rummage through his camera collection and there is an LX 2000 Ltd Edition with this lens. Do you (a) sell it (b) keep it in its presentation box and admire it now and again or (c) use the thing and enjoy it?

Head says (a), heart says (c).

K.