Hi Sue! [ BTW... You'll REGRET to be a MOD in a place like this one especially with Jordy , Slynky and Rork around... NO NO PLEAASEEEE DON' T HITME GUYZ!!! I WAZ JOKING... JOKING!!!! ARRGHHHH! ]

Agree with nplus... don't buy a fladbed scanner with transparency film adaptor ujnless you find a second hand Heidelberg Saphir Ultra 2. This one and the later models like the 1200 FireWire from Heidelberg-hell are the only onmes i've seen that lead to decent results. BTW a good film scanner is the Nikon's CoolScan 2000 and the 4000 one. My advice is for the 4000 but costs nearly 1500 and does ONLY the 35mmm. The only scanner that could be interesting to do 4x5, and 6x6 is the Kodak but costs more than 8000... =P No budget 4x5 scanners... and no budget 35mm ones... if you are looking for something that workz anyway Microtech scanners are good enough and has nice ColorSync profiles (if ya have a mac o'corz), thay are costly anyway... but a bit less than Nikon ones. The cheeper solution is the last EPSON scanner with transparency film cover... 1660(?), don't remember exactly... it's not bad... but absolutely not a professional one... =I

Michelle... pretty normal i guess... the last time i've moved i've cried 2 weekz... Hope Mygen's one will be less stressfull.... =)

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! BTW... if you gonna buy something used a MF could be a choice... good used Rollieflex 2.8 around at less than 600 Euros... =) I bought mine for 450Euros and it's flawless

I'm indeed a fanatic of photographic equipment and i own a lot of lenses and some camera body. When my father teached me how to shot i was only 5 and the optics available were almost only fixed lenght. I still own 2 dozens of fixed-lenght optics original by nikon. At that times zoom lenses were a lot more expensive compared to fixed-lenght ones with the same characteristics (when such zooms were available... coz in the beginning of the '80 were a bit difficult to find an 80-210 f2.8 anyway) and in many ways more low-quality. These days zooms are a completely different matter. Let's look to SIGMA ones, since i've extensively tested 'em... i'm a bit more sure of what i'm saying... ;P with the new APO EX serie SIGMA has resolved a number of problems regarding the Cromatic aberrations and the extension of the optic... The High-end ones has good f too. (my 70-200 for example is a fix f.2.8). Another good reason to prefer zooms is the price. My 70-200 2.8 costs nearly 1.500. How much it costs a 70mm f.2.8 + 135mm f.2.8 + 200mm f.2.8 needed to cover the same optical excursion of the 70-200? In addition SIGMA made an interesting tele-converter to lenghten your APO EX optics by 1.4x or 2.0x Of course, thare are some interesting things about having some fixed - lenght optics. but many times you simply can't overburden your bag with tons of fixed-lenght optics. Anyway the better choices are always in the middle.... My advice is to get some zoom stuff to cover your pimary needs like a 35-70 and an 80-210 and a couple of fixed -lenght like a good 50mm and a 28mm (damn i like wide lenses). Last word on 35-70 stuff... my advice is the Nikon one. really nice 35-70 f.2.8 with a nice manual macro. It's pretty cheap and very very very eclectic. Hope to be helpful... =D Artax

allright... all depends of how much money you wanna spend.... a good camera could be the Nikon F65 (very AUTO, but you can go to manual with some limitations), it is pretty cheap and comes with a Nikon optic bundled. My personal choice would be a Nikon F80. Nice camera, good auto mode but you have mo0re control in the manual environment than the F65. The quality of the shots are better than the F65. This camera body can be bundled with a low-cost nikon optic. a 35-70 I think. now... i have to say that the bundled Nikon optics are really lolw-cost. Plastic, no f control and so on... if you whant something cheap buy the bundle, but IMHO you can save you these money and buy something better. Atr the moment SIGMA doing wonderful optics. My 70-200 f2.8 and my 17-35 are sigma and i'm quite pleased... SIGMA does wonderful low cost optics too... you can buy a nice 70-300 f4.5-5.6 for 250. And are a lot better than low-cost nikon f-less ones. more sturdy and good quality. A good flas for you could be the SB-28 from Nikon. the only one i advice... it's costly... (nearly 750) but it's really integrated with the Nikon Camera body and lead to wonderful results. Besides this the Nikon F80 Camera hhas an integrated TTL flas that do a nice job for himself. So don't bother to buy a flash until you are in touch with the integrated one... it is good enough for beginners. Last advice on Tripod. MANFROTTO ones... definitly. Sturdy (i mean REALLY STURDY), nice, very eclectic and modular. Pretty cheap too. The heads are modulars so you could change the head components on the fly... to see some models go to www.manfrotto.it. Don't worry... they ship worldwide. I've bought from Manfrotto all ,my Tripods and head and the statives too... i'm really pleased of the products. For the head my personal advice is the Joystick one... comes really in handy and cost less than 100 .....

i'm not involving the correction skill of no one... just working on a poor image. I'm talking about the original or "start" image you uploaded. It's not a correction contest (or it is?)... BTW... my correction try to catch in the most natural way (i was not here i cannot say wich color the thing really is) the innate colors of the building. Realism... and sometimes this means low-color... anyway if your original has poor color informations you can't just add 'em... maybe wrong image for an example.

Rork: yeah... i should sell it... no...no... better give it away as a gift.... anyone interested? =P

Rork1973: LAB can give you a real boost if you are trying to correct a really poor color image. it is not fit to process the image from beginning to the end, tho. It's the same with RGB. There are operations that are not possible with RGB or lead to poor results. An example of this is removing JPEG corruptions and/or cromatic aberrations on poor-scanned images. LAB leads to perfect results. Different ways to process colors. IMHO eartho give us a wrong example of what LAB can do; to me seems he has exaggerate colors in the worked pictures... The colors in LAB profile are not ordered in a logical way, but in a mathematical one. If I need to rework the colors of a pic (which i do the 99% of the times i shot a photo with my D1x) i prefer to do such work in a scale I can comprehend immediately. This doesn't mean that LAB can't do such task... sometimes comes in handy if you need some particular correction, but simply it's too complicated for a plain color correction.

Alpha: Thanks for your critics, are always appreciated... =)

I've discovered that this building is currently for sale... If i had money and a more tech-independant work i'll buy it for myself at the cost of 75.000 Euros. =D

why? These are actually rocks falled from an old ruined house roof. The place ( a really evocative one) was embraced in vines and brambles and all the place immersed in a really strange and dim light. These little rocks standing still for a so long time makes me wonder they were sleeping, waiting for something that will not ever come back.

I've inspired a workkkkk!!! WOWWWWW!!!! i'm impressed! =P BTW! Really nice pic... looks like a flying trout to me... but a whale is surely a lot more poetic!! HA HA HA I'm JOKING i'm JOKING...please don't HURT me! Really nice composition.. =) Well done McF! =)