Eep! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagh'nagl fhtagn! grin That last one has a definite Lovecraftian look.. it reminds me a LOT of the Marsh's transformations. - darkpen

I like the first one, myself.. 'cept I don't know if the direction of the blur is right or if it's too strong.. she doesn't strike me as someone in the mood to walk that fast. :P It's a good pic though.. one thing that's interesting is how the lady is black and the background crowd seems to be all white people, too. All in all, gotta love New Orleans though. I still play Gabriel Knight 1 from time to time for the locale. ;) - darkpen

nod I was gonna end up doing that in the long run, but it's always nice to have some recommendations for a starting point. :) Thanks for the info on the Portra, btw. - darkpen

Caledonia & Maygen - Thanks! :) Jordy - HA! and I was gonna take your side on needles ;) As for that brother pic, well, I tried some things this evening, it's actually coming up rather nicely... if I keep just both the blue and red channels, the hair keeps some nice detailing (not as much as I'd like, but the lighting is at fault) and the skin comes out much better. I'm gonna try some other tricks on it and post it once I'm happier with it (hopefully by the time I'm fed up with it he will be too :P ). - darkpen

Cool, I'll look into those.. and that's a nice Ferrari shot, gotta love those waxy highlights. :) I've never actually seen Agfa film.. I knew they were into it, but never seen anything other than scanners and digital cameras in my area. I think I know where I might be able to find some, though. What's it like?

Looks good! I gotta get me one of those Wacom things. Except then I'd have to learn how to draw on top of everything else I want to learn. :P - darkpen

Finder - I actually have Photoshop, didn't know that red trick.. thanks! :) I tried it, and it did help a lot - plus, at the same time I noticed that I also scanned it at too big a dpi, making the interpolation kick in. Now the skin's a lot smoother, but the hair still has no detail showing up.

Now, the pic itself probably has some improper lighting - the detail on it is visible, but probably not enough. And, I also didn't know at that time that my compact camera had one of those 3-positions shutter buttons for the focus. Live and learn.

And yeah, he didn't like the pic, but he liked some of it, so it's not a huge loss. grin I'm gonna get him to pose again.

I think I'll try cleaning my scanner's window first of all (that sucker picks up dirt like crazy!) and separate the layers sometime tonight... use the red channel for the skin and try some other filter on just the hair. I might lose some of the 'haywire' hairs on the sides by masking, but hopefully it'll save the pic.

JordyArt - Ha! Me is a girl picture-taker, as opposed to a girl-picture taker. ;) And yes, I'm Canadian. French Canadian, too, I might add.

And I'm probably worse off than Slynkster - I live in Ottawa! I get to be right in the middle of all the political stuff that goes on here... heh. On the upside, there's a lot of potential for neat photos here. Nothing that compares to the Oregon Vortex though. grin

(now why the Oregon Vortex came to mind, I don't know - I just woke up and remembered it for some reason... dreams of Sam & Max, I guess :P )

And hey, you make good comments as well as being a good comic relief! :)

Thanks!

That cat's 12 years old now, she actually enjoys posing. :) And finally a wise, calm cat after all these years of mischief. grin

That last shot was done in a subway station in Montreal. I wanted to frame it to give the impression that he was moving - I'll probably try that shot again with a bit of intentional shake to blur the dude slightly too next time.

The SLR I got is a Pentax MZ-M - hopefully it's a good one. It came down (after some reading and seeing what the store actually had in stock) between a Minolta STSI, the Pentax MZ-M and the Nikon FM-10.

I know Nikon from their lenses and mirrors, and that was my original choice, but the girl at the store said they had lots of returns on that model because of grain from the lens.. so I looked at the other models. The Minolta was nice, but I liked the Pentax' smaller body.

So I picked the Pentax and put the $20 difference into a good UV filter (so it'll protect the lens as well). The Minolta has a bunch of automatic features that the Pentax doesn't have, but I figure I really want to learn, so I'll do it the hard way. :P

• darkpen

(but now I do! aha!)

So, that's it for now. Hopefully I'll have much better stuff soon. :)

So you can comment away, I'm a newbie. :P

This one's a picture of my oldest cat... I just liked the way she was posing and I thought the shadows from the blinds did neat stuff to her fur.