Phil, up to an 11x14 and under ISO 800, there will not be any significant difference in Image Quality between images from the Flagship Canon, the Flagship Nikon and the Flagship µ4/3 cameras. Those images in the books were taken by people who understood photography and how to best use and take advantage of the tools available to photographers.

Regardless of the cost of your camera gear, images just don't jump into the camera. In general, a pro will capture the exceptional image with any camera. In the hands of a pro, the more expensive the equipment the easier it will be to capture the exceptional image and with greater consistency.

An unskilled and inexperienced novice will need considerable luck to capture the exceptional image and as to consistency ... well ... there really isn't much that can be counted on.

Gary

__________________
"Everywhere you look there are photographs, it is up to us photogs to see them."- Gary Ayala
My Snaps are Here: Unsharp At Any Speed
Critiquing my images is welcomed and greatly appreciated.

So if one doesn't get much time for PP. What camera would you recommend to suit, in a kinda sort of way, all purposes????

Phil

I had an Olympus XZ-1 for a while. If you can live without an ae lock, this little gem might fit the bill

Mines a soligor analog spot sensor. Same thing. probably some weird patent thing to who can call what, what.

Okay, you win ... you have a Soligor Spot Sensor, which is the product's name. The device's classification is spot meter. I have a Pentax Spot Meter, works well with my Minolta incident meter.

Sorry for not knowing that Soligor makes a Spot Sensor.

Gary

__________________
"Everywhere you look there are photographs, it is up to us photogs to see them."- Gary Ayala
My Snaps are Here: Unsharp At Any Speed
Critiquing my images is welcomed and greatly appreciated.

[QUOTE="Phil66"]

I now know, thanks to all of you on here that they are probably heavily PP'd.

thanks again.

Phil[/QUOTE

I wouldn't necessarily say "heavily" but I would say "carefully" and that can take time. You don't have to spend that much time on processing unless you want to. You can make very worthwhile improvements with just a bit of time and effort and produce results which are quite respectable. The further you want to go beyond that, the more time and effort it will take. Achieving the best results takes time and effort whatever you're doing including photography, and it takes practice and regular work to keep your skills up to standard.

You can take the processing side of your photography as far as you would like to, and you don't have to do any if you don't want to but it can be the only way to get what you want, or even close to that, in some circumstances. It is possible to get good shots straight out of camera some of the time but you can't do that all of the time and even good shots can benefit from some careful and attentive processing.

The problem I have with PP, and nobody can help me with this is, I can never decide when to stop, I keep going back to the original and trying different things, I guess it's down to a lack of experience

I find that I sit down for half hour to alter an image and an hour and half later I'm still at it

Phil

I'd hate to see you detail your car. How long does that take you? :)

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EPL-1 & VF2
OMD
Lumix 7-14mm
Lumix 100-300mm
Olympus 60mm
Minolta ROKKOR - X 50mm
Kalimar 28-70mm
Lumix 12-35mm (On My Wish list)
Lumix 35-100 mm (On My Wish list)


http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasdekany/

How much PP have you done? I was like that when I started, and I spent hours on some photos. In the end, some months later, I went back and revisited those photos and redid them using what I had learnt over those months. I took only a few minutes at most per photo and ended up with equivalent or better results using simpler methods.

We start out from a point of ignorance. We don't know what we're doing or what techniques will both give us the result we want and be a way of working that we're comfortable with. We have to learn those things and learning takes time. It's not only about learning what to do but also learning what not to do. Mistakes are educational and it takes time to make mistakes, especially in some cases enough mistakes to convince you that something is a mistake. You spend less time on it as you gain experience, discover what works for you, and discover what can and can't be achieved with a particular sort of shot.

If you want to spend less time on PP and get good results, then you have to spend more time than you'd like to spend on it at the start. It's like learning anything. You need to learn to walk before you run, and crawl before you walk. If you're still crawling or walking, it's going to take you longer to cover a given distance than it will when you've learnt how to run. If you're still learning PP, it's going to take you longer before you're happy with a photo than it will when you've got more experience and have learnt some more.

Nobody starts out doing PP and getting results that satisfy them in the minimum time possible. Everyone starts out taking more time than things can be done in. That extra time is learning time and we all need to spend it. You can't avoid spending it if you want to get results.

So turn some of it into play. Do things to extremes. Find out what happens when you push sliders to the maximum, in both directions if both directions are possible. Try combinations. Play games with curves. Do things you know are wrong. Learn what the controls do and how much is enough, how much is too little, and how much is too much. The more you play, the more you experiment, the more you learn and also the more you learn about different ways of working and which ways appeal to you and which don't. You can do some things in 2 or more different ways. Which is more effective for you, which gives you control in a way that seems more natural to you? You'll never learn these things if you don't put in some extra time at the start.

No one gets brilliant results in 30 seconds without having spent hours getting less than brilliant results. All that time you're begrudging at the start is not time wasted if you stick with it. Eventually it pays off. Giving up before you get to that point does result in that time being wasted.

And this isn't only true of PP. It's true for anything you want to be able to do well.

That's the problem, too many options. I have the same problem with DTP/Graphics stuff ... have you ever worked in a wet darkroom? I limit my options to only the tools which were available (or equal) in a wet darkroom.

You can also "Pre-visualize" the final image prior to releasing the shutter. Then pp only to what you had pre-visualized.

Gary

__________________
"Everywhere you look there are photographs, it is up to us photogs to see them."- Gary Ayala
My Snaps are Here: Unsharp At Any Speed
Critiquing my images is welcomed and greatly appreciated.