Robin Smith

I can see what you are driving at, I think. It is melancholy because it is dark, rather than because the subject is, but if that and loneliness is the feeling it produces in you then that's great, others may share that view, but not me as it happens and I am a subject to melancholia. I think it is a little dull.

Bottom tilts right but big vase tilts left - where does this leave us? I like it. It's pleasant, which sounds damning, but isn't meant to be. This is the kind of shot that is somewhere on the scale between photography and "digital art" or similar.

I like it as it is. You could crop, but there again you could do a 1000 other things to it as well. I don't think it would improve it particularly, it would just make it different.

My immediate feeling is that it is way too blue - I assume this is due to dehaze processing? I would warm up the distant mountains that are in shadow.

The subtle colors of the rock are varied and beautiful and make the color version more interesting. I also think the black and white is high contrast when it does not need to be. Both are workable, and you could use both. Just don't display both together or in the same setting because then you have an unfortunate confrontation set up between them. You can show one one time and the other another time.

I have no big plans, photography-wise, just doing the same things I do now. Bring my camera, take things I like to take. I hope life will get more exciting, in a good way, and I keep my health. Keep the fascists out of my life and my countries.

Results are very good. It takes a number of exposures and then combines them in camera to produce a final RAW, but it is best used for fast moving water, waterfalls and clouds etc and you need a tripod. It is not much use for shooting wide open in sunlight to get lots of bokeh. However, most current digital mirrorless cameras have 1/8000 top speed and with electronic shutter even higher 1/32000, so I find that I am rarely challenged for shooting wide open in bright sunlight. I also routinely shoot in low ISO modes if necessary, I have not noticed a diminution in quality, although I am sure it exists. This is why I have essentially given up with ND filters. However even with the Olympus system you may find that it is too bright to successfully use the in-camera ND function for fast-flowing water without stopping the lens down to tiny apertures (f22) which impacts sharpness for certain, especially in m43.

Best to get a circular polarizer to be safe. They use to be an issue with the DSLR meters that worked using reflected light from the mirror which caused polarization so metering could be affected. I don't think this is the case with mirrorless cameras. Agree with the others the biggest issues with variable NDs is a color cast. Some people also complain about irregularity of polarization with them too. This is more noticeable the more opaque they become. I have circular polarizers, but I don't seem to use or need them with digital. They can to some extent be used in place of a ND if needs be by holding back a stop or two of light.

Use a thin sheet of black paper cut to size and use as a mask? I think you may need a corner cut off so the scanner can calibrate.

Giving up a Rollei seems like a good idea. Let someone else play with such a nice camera. I had an itch for Hasselblad and owned a kit with 50/80 and 150mm lenses for about 15 years. My end analysis is that it is an awkward beast and I wished I hadn't wasted my time and effort with it. I should have got a TLR, Mamiya 6/7, any 645, or a Fuji 6x7 or 6x9 instead. To me it is a camera for tripod use and when on a tripod produces good results, but to carry around as a kit for fun, no way. Give me a Rollei any day.

I have not used Bay Photo for about 5 years, but I was always happy with their service. I never used their color correction service. I sent them files and they printed the prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. So it is a "real" color print not an inkjet.

I used to have a Wacom tablet but the drivers for it are no longer working with Windows 10 and have not been updated, so it is finished. It was useful on occasion when dodging and burning, but the newer tools (e.g. content-aware editing) in LR means that I don't seem to be missing it.

Too true. In my very humble opinion the OP went berserk unnecessarily. Give the guys at B&H time to resolve the issue, before calling in the cops. All the action probably did nothing to speed up the resolution.

No one surely looked to them for photographic excellence in the sense that sample photos are examples of high art. Lenstip is arguably even worse. But sample photos are just to give people ideas of sharpness, bokeh, and (how I hate that word) "rendering". I thought their reviews were useful, and it will be sad if all this information is lost. I too feel that PetaPixel is not a patch on them. Having to rely on YouTube reviewers does fill a sentient human with dread.

"role eliminations" clearly is a new euphemism for layoffs/firing. Why not call a spade a spade? Such is corporate life. DPreview was clearly making insufficient money despite being a fairly well-respected general news site.

This a serious flaw IMO. Right now there is a pic of a woman with large breasts on the forum landing page. OK for me as it is better than most nudes, and I work remotely, but it won't be OK for many.

While 13,000 is bad, I can easily imagine it happening. Suppose your camera is set at around 10 fps, which is a good idea if you want catch best expressions. Every time you take a shot you get 10. Continue for 3 hours + it would easily add up. Particularly for a large wedding. When I did weddings a very popular question the couple asked was how many photos would I take. Quality was not the issue for most. Now you are also competing with phones, so you need a lot of shots to get everything of interest, or at least that is what some couples think.

In principle no. But it will only encourage others to post even more of these images and worse ones once people see it is a "safe site", for shots of naked people. As others say, it will mean people will not visit the site as much, particularly for those at work. Victor has a reasonable idea: make "recent uploads" a separate page you have to actively click to see and not the landing page.

My erotic imagination has increased with age, much to my surprise. Not too fond of the nudes I see here on PNet, but largely because to me they are overwhelmingly neither erotic nor artistic. The artistic quality of most of the photos on the site is hardly artistic either in my view, so I suppose we can't really hold that against them. Many people seem to think anything erotic, even if subtle (no genitalia), is bad. Personally I have no problem with it, in fact I like it. But my erotic may well not be the same as yours. In general though I agree with the OPs contention, there is something deeply tacky about most of the stuff I see coming up here. To me it screams "there are no moderators at work here."

B&W for sure. I don't really like the converging verticals on the B&W but it's better than the GCT pic.

Looks in a foul mood. Does Giuseppe like it?

It's not in focus at this image size and resolution. Looks like a low res image

A little reading can be a dangerous thing... Is your client wanting black and white prints or digital images? If the latter then you don't need to worry about the printing side at all. Nowadays actually needing prints seems a rare request, at least it is for me. If they are required and you can't print a good black and white print yourself, just send the black and white conversion to a commercial printer and they should be able to produce a good black and white print. Pass on the cost to the client. Personally having tried Silver Efex and a few other plugins I find the current LR ones are quite sufficient. Beware advertising blurb. All of these instant black and white conversions are there to give you some idea of conversion possibilities from which you tweak to taste, so it doesn't really matter how you get there. It's not like you have to take the plugin with no further changes. The important thing (like always) is to know what you want and what you like, or what you think your client will like.

Flickr allow 1000 shots for free. So you can delete and put new ones up as time passes. Ideal for this kind of thing.

The band of light is, as others say, irretrievable. It is just 100% and shows no detail. So the best plan is simply to crop the image tightly to exclude it. You could convert to black and white and selectively decrease highlight or whites in that area, so that it becomes more gray and slightly less worrying, but I think this is unlikely to work very well, so cropping is best.