a bartender i met waiting for the broken down bus to arrive on my way to Chicago.

mmmmm.....Hot......Bartender.....Me.....Like

^ From what I have been told, NR in LR3 and CS5 is supposed to be the same thing. In any case, I'm liking what NR in LR3 has been able to do noise in high ISO pics as well.

Yes, LR3 and CS5 both use Camera Raw 6, so their development processes are essentially the same, until you open the image up into photoshop.

I tried using Adobe's Lens Profile Creator for a couple of my more obscure 3rd-party lenses today. Even just using rudimentary 8.5x11" test charts, the results for distortion and vignetting correction were very impressive. The CA correction wasn't quite perfect, but I was making my profiles in about the most quick and dirty method possible, so I can forgive that.

With a little more effort (using full-size charts, profiling more apertures, and getting more precise framing via live view) this should be just about the perfect lens correction solution. Since they are DIY corrections, I suppose I could even create custom profiles for lenses which vignette when used with a CPL filter.

I want to learn a bit more about (film) photography, so does anyone have any recommendations on what websites or books I should read?

..I am starting to get along with CS4 a bit more. I still don't like it as much as CS3, but at least I now have decent workflow.

I took this shot back in April, using my EF 50mm F/1.8 I, as I had lent my F/1.4 to my friend Jeremy. F/2, 1/80th, ISO320, tungsten white balance. No edits other than my stamp [Then WTF did you need Photoshop for, Knucks?]

Sounds like you just need Photoshop: watermarking edition

So I have been playing around with comparing lenses in somewhat controlled situations to see if I can detect much difference. I need to work up a better testing scenario as I was not smart enough to fix the focus point for all the different lenses so focus and potentially metering could be different. Oh well I will work on it some more when i get bored again I guess.

Both images were taken at 30mm, f4, 1/60, 580ex II. Both are L Glass of varying quality. Both are straight out of the camera with only crop and sizing.

I redid them with center focus, focusing on the black die.

I don't like the bokeh in the lower picture. The cloth is smeary in a way that's hard for me to look at. But in the lower picture I like the contrast better, the quality of the gleam on the metal especially.

The second picture had a longer exposure than the first.

The Associated Press: The odyssey: Camera survives ocean trip to Fla.

Some from my lunchtime walk today.

Bleh. I guess I screwed up putting film in and the film stopped advancing when I was out shooting. Didn't notice until I was at the "end" of the roll

A few more

Did you go nuts with the sharpening settings on the 1st picture? There's a pretty obvious halo around the Empire State Building as well as the top of the trees.

Yeah, the first one posted was run through auto presets in both Aperture and Lightroom inadvertently so it got overcooked. I replaced the source image with one that should be better.

i thought it just had deflector shields turned on.

shhh!

The Terrorists have the Internets.

A few from the Red Bull Air Races today.

Nice shots!

I think it's definitely worth spending some time in Photoshop to clean them up a bit, fix the colours & brightness and really make things pop. This is what I generally aim for in my airplane photos, this one's from the Toronto air show last year. I try to get the colours as bright and saturated as I can.

Yeah, some are a bit washed out by the direct sunlight. I can fix them to some extent.

A few others:

Some from the Artist squatter building in the neighborhood.

Great shots Jeff. Wish I could have been there, but my parents dragged me to a Korean Art Auction (which was fun in its own way)

also, took a lot of pictures along the way!

What I've been up to recently:

Molly, giving me a taste of my own medicine and haranguing me with her point and shoot. DJ Sinistarr is visible in the background.

EF 50mm F/1.8 (Mk I) @ F/2.8, ~2 minute exposure, ISO 100. WB was set to tungsten, IIRC.

76 second exposure, other settings as above.

I love my old non-USM primes because they have a hard stop at infinity focus, which is essential for nighttime long exposures. Trying to set a USM lens to infinity in the dark is enough to drive one mad.

Damn those firefly shots look awesome.

I like the firefly shots, too. I really got to get myself a tripod so I can play around with long exposures at night - too bad those things are damn expensive.