daryl walter

I'm using it. It's very cool :) The latest two on my community page are R1 shots. Not that that tells you much as a picture is a picture is a picture but I like using it and I like the results it gives.

Hi Kim, I don't think the time of day is important, I think the sun just needs to be

between you and the cloud/mist/fog so in theory they should be fairly common. In

my experience they are however fairly rare and generally (excluding being in a plane)

I think you're most likely to see them near the tops of mountains where there is cloud

but sufficiently bright sunshine breaking through to cast the shadow which form the

Brocken spectre. I've attached the only one I've ever photographed so you can see the

sorts of conditions that allowed this one to appear (this is at about 10-11000ft). This

shot was taken around

midday and you can see my shadows stretching away from me (it's not very clear in

the picture but in reality you can see yourself quite clearly projected onto the clouds)

and in this case there was enough moisture in the air to generate a Brocken bow as

well (or glory ring as some people call them). It was an experience I won't forget. I've

spent a fair amount of time in mountains and not seen too many of these so you

might struggle to find one on demand but if you spend enough time walking up

mountains you might get lucky. Have fun stalking your spectre :)

Mark, as already mentioned above, you need to use a compression codec of some

description. The Sorensen codecs available in many animation/movie packages are

quite good and compatable with a lot of browsers. More efficient codecs are available

(e.g. DivX) but a lot of these require installation of plug-ins and so on so you have to

bear that in mind if the intention is to make your animations widely accessable.

Hi Gary

I did it barefoot :) The path up to the river is like a highway so no special shoes

needed there but the river is a bit gnarly and on the whole you'd probably be better

off having something on your feet (I bruised a toe or two). Actually I didn't get the

whole way up the canyon as the water was too deep (in July) and I'd have had to swim

and I didn't have a waterproof bag for my camera gear. I'll have to try again some

other time. Have fun, its an amazing place!

Hi again

Thanks to all of you for replying and thanks also to those who had a look at some of

my pictures and commented on those too (with some really great feedback I migh

add - I'll return the favour as soon as possible). I had hoped that what I wrote

wouldn't come across as a petulant rant or an overt plea for attention and judging

from most of the responses that seems to have been the case. I realise that I need to

give feedback to get feedback but I'm not really that concerned with the quantity (as

long as it's not zero) as opposed to the quality. It is nice to get one word expletive

compliments on an image but its not that useful in terms of developing (I like my

pictures already anyway). Seven and Dave, I'll definitely frop by 'Picture This' and see

how that looks - sounds like it might be what I'm after - thanks for the pointer.

Hi all, I've been hanging around this site on and off for about a year and occassionally

I get some useful feedback when I post a photo and ask for critique but quite often I

get a few ratings (which generally hover around the middle of the scoring range and

to be honest don't tell me a great deal) and that's about it. I've tried proactively

giving feedback on other people's photos to see if that helps get some mutual

feedback but apparently not. Just wondering if this is a common experience or are

my photos really quite dull? Is this site too big to expect much feedback?

Hi Pablo. That definitely looks like a diffraction pattern and the description of how

you scanned this image would fit with the pattern being of the 'Newton's rings'

variety. Newton's rings usually form due to interference created by reflection of light

from a flat surface onto a spherical surface. In scanners moisture on either the

negative or on the glass surface (the tiny spherical droplets of moisture are

responsible for the concentric rings in the pattern) can result in this problem. In

theory you can avoid this by making sure that everything is very dry. This may be

possible if you live at very high altitude but in practice it isn't easy to get things as

dry as they need to be. This is the reason that most transparency scanners use

specially designed neg. carriers and the reason that they don't support scanning of

glass-mounted slides. Your scanner should compensate for the non-flatness of your

negatives by doing a prefocussing run but if this isn't working then perhaps you

coudl try manual focussing? (depends on how good your scanner is I guess).

Alternatively I wonder if you could scan the slide in two different directions and

combine the results? Anyway, the short answer is 'Yes' it is that 'Newton effect'.

Sorry I can't be more helpful with a solution. Daryl P.S. Are you sure the sharpness

problem isn't lack of focus in the original negative? Nice cat! (I thought Newton was

his name when I first looked at your post :) )

I'm never sure why people bother with padded bags. I just carry mine in whatever

bag I'm using (sometimes wrap it in a plastic bag if I'm hiking in the rain) and have

never had any bother. I guess I might be a bit miffed when I do eventually crack it

open on a rock but it hasn't happened yet.

Very interesting thread. Must admit it hadn't occurred to me to try and boost ratings

via some of these methods but now I think I understand how some pictures are

getting the ratings that they are. I had wondered if I was posting my own images at

the wrong time of day or something (not that I think they're so good that they should

be on the TRP (if that stands for what I think it stands for)). I must admit that despite

the high ratings of relatively poor images you do actually still see a lot of really good

images on this site and I learn a lot from looking at these.