Hard to tell too much from smallish jpegs but it looks pretty good to me too. Not heard of the make myself. Nice shots as well, especially the second one with the tinsel.

Best wishes, Kris.

Have fun with them all and I hope you have a trolley to carry them... my memory of zeniths is "heavy"

Look forward to seeing some images.

Best wishes, Kris.

I am sure gimp will have sharpening in there somewhere, it is pretty much a basic must-have feature for any photo editing software.

Confusingly, it is called the "unsharp mask" in photoshop and hides in the filter menu.

When to sharpen and by how much, etc., is quite an involved topic. It is usually recommended that the last thing you do to an image is sharpen it as the type/amount of sharpening depends on the final use/size of the image (i.e. sharpening a jpeg for the web is not the same as sharpening a large file for printing). Having said that, the latest issue of "view camera" magazine said to sharpen first... arrggghhh...

Best wishes, Kris.

Edit: as I was writing this Pete posted his version. You can see that it is less radically sharpened as it has less of a "halo" effect around the edges of the wings. Perhaps we should have a e-book on this to go with Matt's on flash!

How did you do the B&W conversion? I'm not sure what facilities paintshop pro has, but the B&W conversion layer in Photoshop CS3 allows one to selectively darken or lighten various "colours" by dragging the mouse across them. You can also mimic the effect of various coloured filters. George is probably right though, there is a good photo to be had from the scene, but the light could well be better.

I might also suggest getting closer but with a wider angle lens to exaggerate the perspective a bit, but I'd need to be there to see if that would help

Cheers, Kris.

Well I am anything but an expert but I just tried:

a) cropping to get the tree line in the background horizontal.
b)Cropping again to get the near leg of the bench near the bottom of the picture and the tree line on the third resulting in a letter box format. (Looking again it is on the 2/5ths... )
c)Turning the contrast down a little. I did it crudely with the central slider of the levels command (gamma?) but a curves adjustment would be better.

Other peeps would do other things, no doubt

HLH. Kris.

Try looking here.

Cheers, Kris.

Fountain at night, South Carolina. Shot 6/1/09. K10D, DA* 50-135, shots blended in photoshop.

If I understood Roscoe correctly, he got a £100 cash back AND a fifteen quid voucher. Not sure why he got the voucher as well, perhaps due to using that store.

Gwyn... surely some helpful PUG person could claim your cashback and then send you the cash, if you find someone you trust?

Best wishes, Kris.

Welcome to fora. Enjoy the new camera when it arrives!

Best wishes, Kris.

A near neighbour of mine then, when I am at home!

Cheers, Kris.