[robgski]

Heh, my quick-pic from yesterday just hit Explore. Not easy to predict these things.

Cool picture, congratulations! I'd love to try some long exposure in that location

[pepperberry farm]

my 'on the sideboard' shot yesterday hit flickr's explore:

[graeme83]

My so-so astro shot got explored! The mind boggles.

[savoche]

I hope to do some catching up tonight. The weekend was, as expected, quite busy but I did get some pictures. Last night I had a beer (and another...) with a friend I haven't seen for years... so expect a safety for yesterday

[babywriter]

Sorry for my lack of commenting lately! Annual audit approval time for the company I work for. Should be able to do some catch-up today.

[todd]

Just keep shooting, just keep shooting...
Daily in October 2017 - discussion thread - PentaxForums.com

[savoche]

Just keep shooting, just keep shooting...
Daily in October 2017 - discussion thread - PentaxForums.com

Nononono, I'm barely hanging by my fingernails onto a speeding September, and you're already pulling up October??

Can we postpone next month by a week or two?

[graeme83]

I have fallen off the wagon this month, just not been feeling it photographically the past few weeks, not decided about next month yet, will see.

I need some advice / talking out of.

The DA*300/4.0 is an *exceptional* lens.

But just to follow up on a post from earlier in the month about getting a new lens. Well, the seller dropped the price and after a bit of umming and ahhing I went for it! So I am now the proud owner of one of Pentax's 'grown up' lenses, the DA* 300mm f4.

Bought yesterday, and received less than 24 hours later this morning (wish all ebay sellers were that quick).



Thanks to Sandy for replying and showing some great examples, I hope I can do the lens justice.

[Sandy Hancock]

Thanks to Sandy for replying and showing some great examples, I hope I can do the lens justice.

You're welcome. Always happy to enable!

You'll love it.

[zippythezip]

Been working nights and have fallen way behind. The daylight I had has been rainy and not very inspiring.

[robgski]

What a month it was, far too busy. On to October
[IMG][/IMG]

[savoche]

Never got to take a picture yesterday. Had one of my migraine days. But to sum September for me:
- Missed 3 days, I think
- Got 3 pictures into Explore and I lost count of how many we got in as a group this month!
- Most importantly for my part, I was inspired to try out more options in post processing, specially with the Color Efex filters. I have also began using local adjusments more. For most shots I will still let my import settings do most of the job - depending on camera and ISO I have set up Lightroom to do a set of adjustments that I tend to always do anyway; pull down highlights, lift the shadows, pull in the white and black points, add lens correction settings, add CA correction, and add sharpening and noise reduction. Especially the last part differ quite a lot depending on the ISO. What this month has added is that some of the Color Efex filters work really well on landscape shots (Skylight and Foliage), and that the detail extractor can extract a lot of detail I think what it does is to increase contrast through tone mapping - the images get an HDR look when increasing the effect.

Still so much more to learn. Which is a good thing

Thanks for all the comments - really appreciated!

[robgski]

This month was busy, too busy, and October will be very busy, but I will perservere on my efforts.

[pepperberry farm]

it was a good month for me - multiple bodies and lenses used throughout, two 'explores', good fun....

[utak]

Well, I had a blast this month, trying out different processing options. You only saw part of my attempts; rejecting ones that ranged from ugly to bizarre. I tried a number of different free software packages - FastStone, all the NIK packages, Windows' Photos, Photo Gallery, and also used RawTherapee for the first time. Plus the not-free PSE and Photoshop CC. Until a year ago, I tended to use only Windows' Photo Gallery to process photos, and it's been a fun journey.

Health warning

Even with a simple package like Photo Gallery, I've always done quite a lot of pp. Mainly because the lenses I like to use are old and eccentric. Many of my favourite bokeh rendering lenses produce unprocessed image quality that is not very appealing to a digital-era audience (including myself); low contrast, creamy or muddy colours (depending on lens), edge softness etc. I totally agree with @ Savoche that people can be too obsessed with digital perfection and edge-to-edge sharpness. But some old lenses really do lack contrast for most tastes, and one needs to do the pp to bring out the best of the lens.

Sometimes my pp'ing has caused problems for others. People have purchased lenses they've seen me use and have expected the images to look like the way I've presented them. I should really put a health warning on the level of processing required. Someone (not part of this forum) wrote to me recently criticising me for making an old/rare/expensive lens look much better than it is on digital cameras, because of the way I'd processed the images. They'd purchased the lens and were very disappointed in the results. The funny thing is - to me these criticisms are real complements!

Successes and failures

I quickly became enamored with vignettes. Before this September, I'd hardly done any vignetting. By the end of the month I was vignetting everything in sight, lighter, darker, sometimes both. And having a great time. Especially after discovering the joys of Color Efex's lighten and darken controls, and the ability to set the highlight spots. Two of the most vignetted photos were Explored, so that's a success story of sorts.

Other valuable discoveries included Color Efex Pro's detail extractor, the high structure settings in Silver Efex, and the soft bokeh settings in Analog Efex. And perhaps the most important of all - Dfine 2. Hashing around my images often resulted in a lot of background noise and Dfine 2 does a good job reducing noise. All these options give us new ways of looking at our photos.

My one big failure was producing a pencil sketch-type image. I learned the technique on Photoshop, but just couldn't take a photo that suited a sketch, despite numerous attempts. Perhaps a human portrait would have been the best subject. If anyone is interested in producing pencil sketches on Photoshop, this video tutorial is a good one. Turn a photo into a pencil sketch in Photoshop tutorial - PhotoshopCAFE

Thanks

Many thanks to everyone who posted such inspiring photos, and fave'd and commented on my photos. @ pepperberry farm..interesting/sorry to read elsewhere why your comments are restricted.

Finally, yesterday's Helios 40 lens shot was Explored, coming in at #25. I've never been this high before. (And I went to a very liberal college). It has quickly smashed my record for numbers of views. Sadly I'm going to have to sit out October's challenge, so I wish you all the best.