Attached Link: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_opinions.asp?prodkey=epson_photopc3100z

DPReview.com hasn't done an in-depth review of the PC3100Z but they do have owner's comments at the link above.

Actually, though I don't have the time to experiment with
the idea, I had thought of attaching a bellows, front
standard, and lens board with lens to a flat bed scanner
to turn it into a digital view camera. :-) Just attach
a sheet of frosted plastic to the glass to focus on and
put a hinge on the scanner's body so the bottom half can
swing away (to view the focusing screen), and wah-lah!
Instant large format view camera!

Yep. Stitching multiple shots of moving water must be maddening. You done good.

Well bev, you know how it is. Once people start using a place for a dump ground, the problem just gets worse and worse...

Now ya see? This really is a shame...

I agree about the cropping. The colors seemed a little cold so I nudged them around a bit (reduced the blue in Curves). I didn't re-crop the image to show that there are some blue flowers at the bottom of the image which were lost before warming up the colors.

I've gotta say, you're pretty handy with that tablet. I have
one here but I never use it because it feels too unnatural
watching the monitor while drawing on another surface (the
tablet).

Ummm.... Of course I meant "SCR", not "SQR"... :-)

The exposure seems perfect to me Michelle. Great photo.
How do you do the duo-toning? Is that a regular feature of
photoshop, or do you have to go through several steps to
do it?

Funny, I thought the male was on the left and the female
was doing all the talking... He has that glazed-over far-off
look in his eye of a hen pecked husband... Probably
day-dreaming about the belt sanders and hot glue guns he
saw the last time he was at Sears while the female blathers
on about remembering to mow the lawn, take the trash out,
and her sister's latest make-over. :-)

I think this is a very cool picture. It reminds me of a
horror flick I saw on TV as a kid called, "Carnival of
Souls". It was shot in B&W and took place in an abandoned
amusement park. Don't remember all the details of the movie
except that the plot was very eerie, like a confused
nightmare, where the main character couldn't find her way
out of the place. Turns out at the end that her car had
gone off a bridge, and the bulk of the movie had been her
last thoughts as she drowned... Or something...

Boy, this forum seems to be taking a turn toward creepy
images lately!

The interesting thing about this triptych is that the
first time I looked at it I scanned from the leftmost
part to the center, and because of the change in angle
a trick was played on my mind, giving me the impression
that the statue was caught in motion, as though it had
miraculously changed it's pose between shots. Doruksal
had done something similar a while back with a two
component triptych of a real bird and a figurine of a
bird. When I first looked at it I was momentarily
confused as to which was the real bird and which was
the figurine.

This isn't an optical illusion, per se, but rather an
illusion of logic (for lack of a better word), because
it plays games with one's mental associations between
the objects.

The third photo does seem to short circuit the effect.
I think a third angle would be much better, and complete
the effect.

Just to give you all an idea of what this picture looked like originally, and how drastically you can modify an image digitally, here's the original. I'm not quite happy with the tint either. I was going for a selenium blue/moonlight sort of duo-tone, but my image manip. program has no direct way of doing that, I had to experiment with a "filter pack" plug-in and then mess with the saturation. The tint doesn't look too obvious on this monitor (I was going for something very subtle) but I can't seem to get the color "cold" enough. Does Photoshop have a duo-toning tool, or does it require a less direct technique? If so, could someone (Michelle did a great job in her "Feeling Blue" image a while ago) explain how it's done? I'm going to re-do the image a couple of ways, one with the background darkened so that there is just a hint of gravestones, and one with the background lightened to give the impression of a more evenly moonlit graveyard. I'll post them both for comparison purposes and get your opinions again. Thanks for the input everyone.

I think weirdstop makes some good points. I don't think it's
necessary to have a seperate area or whatever for serious
critique. All we need to do is make it known what we want
in the way of comments ("This is just a fun shot" or "I'd
like serious critique/pointers on this image") in the forum
at least. Perhaps to catch people's eye we could adopt a
simply abbreviation in the subject line of our posts, such
as "SQR" for serious critique requested.

Personally, I'd never be offended by anyone here who offered
tips for improvement on my photos. After all improvement is
a goal of mine, and a forum like this is invaluable as a
learning tool.

Attached Link: http://homepage.mac.com/mattdenton/photo/cameras/praktica_mtl3.html

Looks like you've got a very nice, rugged workhorse of a camera there, Mike. It seems that that camera has rather noble bloodlines, in that the West German half of the company (Zeiss Ikon) that made the Praktica made the Contax. The East German half made your camera.

The camera takes standard M42 screwmount lenses, which is
nice because there are still a lot of good sharp lenses with
M42 mounts out there on the used market.

I can't find any info specific to your lenses, but Carl Zeiss
lenses generally get very good marks for being sharp.

135mm is a good focal length for portraits, BTW.