Good plan. But now I've got Contenta, it solves all the problems very easily. But thanks anyway.

I hope to publish some of these, and I understand RAW is best for that purpose.

Give the guy a break, chaps. He's obviously excited about the pix and wants to share his pleasure. GIMP would really help him along too.

Keep shooting, Tune7!

I had a problem with my Leica VLUX 4 producing pictures with the very odd extension .RWL

GIMP would open them, Lightroom wouldn't accept them so I was stuck. (I later found out that RWL stands for RAWLEICA)

However, somebody recommended the Contenta Converter program and I bought it (about $20 I think).

It turned out to be a little beauty of a program: easy to use, even for dummies. It swallowed the RWL files without taking breath, and churned out JPEGS, PNGs TIFs and all else my heart could desire.

If any of you guys have a similar problem, give it a go. They offer a free trial period for a month, if I remember rightly and then make a charge.

I'm really thankful for it, because many of the pictures of my last American trip would have been just sitting there doing absolutely nothing.

Try this. Go into GIMP (free download). Go to Colors in
taskbar, and fiddle with the contrast/brightness adjustments.

You will be amazed at what can happen to a picture such as number 1 above.

Enjoy.

Quickie:

I took a picture (attached) using the autofocus, and it came out blurred.

Trouble is, it's quite beautiful BECAUSE of the blurring. But... I haven't a clue as to WHY it blurred, and how to repeat the effect...DUH....

Any ideas?

Thanks guys. There's a lot of excellent advice here, and I will have to give the various answers some really serious thought.

Asyncritus

A couple of years ago I splashed out (for me,that is) and bought a Leica VLUX4. I'd been out of the photgraphic game for many years, and at the time I 'left' I knew that Leica lenses cost small fortunes. Nothing's changed...!

So I was amazed to see the VLUX4 with a 25 - 600mm 2.8 Elmarit lens for the price available, and went out and bought the thing plus a bit of marital discord. Luckily that's been sorted out....

The camera is light, beautiful to handle, and very docile. If I want long focus, I got it. If close-up, I got it. All of the digital bells and whistles are there, and I don't honestly see how the definition and colour rendition can be bettered but then, I'm only a technical amateur and may be talking off the top of my head. Here's a couple of them:

Hi guys

I'd like to try selling some of my photos, but dunno how to start. Isn't that always the way!

Any advice most gratefully received!

A CHASTENING EXPERIENCE

For an experienced, and I may add without too much self-aggrandisement, a pretty good ex-teacher, it was a humbling experience to meet up with a pair of the most excellent, inspiring and highly competent teachers I have ever met on a photography course.

Anywhere, in fact.

Let me put you in the picture here. About 2 years ago, I bought a Leica VLUX4 camera to photograph my son’s wedding. I have had a long-standing love affair with Leica, and simply could not believe my good fortune when I discovered that it had a 25 – 600 mm zoom lens.

Knowing the price of their fixed lenses, I thought it would cost a zillion pounds, but no, while it wasn’t cheap, it was not prohibitive , so I bought it online and have been using it ever since, using the usual zooms, program, and snapshot settings.

To be fair, I have had a reasonable amount of success with it. It’s difficult to go too far wrong with this camera, even for a photographic moron. Nice shots, some dramatic ones, colourful ones and so on.

But I have long had a nasty suspicion, creeping round the dim edges of my limited photographic mind, that the 200-odd pages of the instruction manual weren’t there just for decoration, or in my case, confusion. Whatever else they may be, Leitz isn’t stupid enough to waste all that writing, but I am stubborn in refusing to expend mental effort reading and applying stuff I would a. find difficult to understand and b. might find no use for. So there it all lay, totally unread, rarely consulted, and nearly useless to me.

I might just as well have bought an Instamatic for all the good this magnificent camera did me.

The electronic gubbins inside the sleek little body were about as useful and accessible as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The technical stuff in the manual might as well have been written in cuneiform, for all the good it did me.

Enter Jack and Jamie from Exmoor Photographics.

As a belated birthday present to myself, I bought one of their courses and went on an expedition to the Somerset Levels with them a couple of days ago, and as I said above, it was at the same time, the most chastening and most illuminating photographic course of my life.

Take focusing as an example. Everybody knows how to focus their camera. You point and twiddle till the subject is clear, then you click the shutter. No problems.

But did I know that there’s a manual focusing button on the barrel of the lens? Like hell I did. Hold the camera by the lens barrel, said Jack, Use your left thumb to move the lever to zoom it, and that way, your right forefinger (I’m right-handed) can be freed from the duty of zooming, and only used for pressing the shutter button.

Reduces the tendency to snatch or jerk the finger while pressing the button. Didn’t know that, did I?
And what’s all this stuff about AFS, AFC, AF, AF with a little flower by the side of it? (Macro stuff, said Jack).

Well, a little green box comes up in the viewfinder, and that’s what is in focus when the AF mode is in play. But what really startled me was when he told me that the AFC (auto-focus continuous) setting focuses on the subject in the green box, and once the shutter button is half pressed down, wherever the subject moves in the frame, that green box follows it round, recognizing the face or whatever, and keeping it in focus!

Now however did they manage to do that, I wonder?

As you might guess, my respect for the camera (and for Jack and Jamie) was growing by leaps and bounds.

I hope he won’t be too annoyed with me for revealing this next little ‘secret’.

‘Use the HDR setting when photographing wildlife’ he said, ‘because you can never tell when the perishers are going to move, and with the single shot setting you’ll probably miss it completely.’ Very good advice that.

I’m a spot metering man, myself, but, says he, don’t do it with wildlife, because if your aim is a millimeter off because the damned thing moved suddenly, then you’ll get a wrong reading and probably wreck a good picture. Only too true.

But by far the most important lesson he taught me, was the Exposure Compensation lesson. It’s nearly miraculous IMHO.

Put the camera into Aperture or Shutter priority mode, and then depress the setting wheel, and lo and behold, a little scale pops up at the bottom of the viewfinder, with a + and a – sign at either end.

It’s white to begin with, but when I pressed the wheel again, guess what? – it went yellow. Good piece of decoration, I had thought up to that point in time, stupid old me, but it’s far more valuable than that.

It’s a piece of ‘I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do, camera, so shut up and obey your master’ (that’s me BTW). The trouble is, really, that the camera’s metering system is just so damned good, that you come to depend entirely on it. Very few mistakes come from using it.

Jamie swung in here.

I shot a kingfisher (I think) perched above on a branch against the sky, and you experienced guys know exactly what happened, don’t you?

Yeah. It came out black and featureless.

OK, sez Jamie, this is what you do. You press the wheel twice, and it goes yellow, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it does.

If you’re shooting against a bright background, you turn the wheel to the right, so it moves 2 or three notches to the right. Now shoot again.

Sure enough, the bird’s plumage came up in acceptable colour detail! Well, I’ll be damned.

I forgot Jack’s admonition to return the thing to the zero setting, and went chasing a little butterfly, which conveniently landed on a bright white bindweed flower. I focused and zapped away, and the butterfly came up in beautiful detail.

You see, said Jamie, you made a mistake and forgot to zero the wheel. So because the flower is so white and bright, it’s like the sky. And the wheel setting which was right for the bright white sky, was also right for the bright white flower and you got the butterfly quite right. Patience, thy name is Jamie!

I’ve gone on for long enough, and won’t reveal any more of Jack’s secrets here: and there were many more, I assure you. But I’d like to pay tribute to Exmoor Photography in the shape of Jack and Jamie. They’re here, if you want an unsurpassable photographic experience. www.exmoorphotography.co.uk

As I said at the start, it was a chastening and humbling experience to be taken in hand by two masters of the craft. I have improved considerably already and would like to post these 2 pictures taken one day later at the Stratford Butterfly Farm. They were taken against the bright roof, which would previously have guaranteed a miserable black image. But thanks to the instruction I received, here is the beautiful result.

I’d also like to pay tribute to the wizards of Wetzlar, the makers of the Leica VLUX4. That 2.8 Elmarit 25 – 600 zoom lens cannot be faulted, is not easy to equal, and nearly impossible to surpass.

Jack says there’s a Nikon lens that in his opinion is the sharpest thing he knows, but what the heck: it costs about 5000 GBP, and that’s without the body. So nuts to that. I’m sticking with the VLUX4!

Asyncritus

Thanks guys. I'll give it your best shots, and let you know how I get on. Won't be till the end of August.

I'm going to a wedding, and want to take some pics.

The bride is black - very much so - and she will be wearing a white wedding dress.

I foresee problems with exposure and burn out.

Any help gratefully accepted.

I've had a copy of the GIMP for a little while now, but I haven't been able to get very far with it, past Brightness and Contrast adjustments - which, I have to say, have considerably improved many of my photographs.

I refuse to buy the expensive PS, and had a free copy of Lightroom come in with my Leica VLUX4, but I had to give up on that as I've been unable to get my head round the cataloguing system....well, nobody's perfect...

So enter the GIMP, and now, I've found a book called 'Grokking the GIMP' by Carey Bunks who's got to be some kind of genius given his CV.

And at last, hooray and trumpets of glory, I'm able to begin to understand some of the basic concepts, or even basic words I've been reading all over the place (with the common glazed-eye - DUH syndrome in full force).

Did you know, for instance, that an image is made up of layers, which are made up of channels, which are made up of pixels in descending order size-wise? No? Well I didn't either till I read Bunks. Strange, that - nobody bothers to say - maybe they don't know either?

Now, every time I open the book with the GIMP at the ready, I learn a bit more, and blow a few more trumpets. Mind you,I haven't produced a proper picture yet, but if Bunks is as clear when we get round to that level, then it should be a snap, or at least a vast improvement over blundering blindly in the dark, wrecking pictures everywhere, and peppering the air with deleted expletives !

But what a crazy name for a book! Grokking the GIMP! Sounds like some beast from the planet ZOG grunting grimly and fiercely!

But I am most grateful to Bunks for bothering to put pen to paper in his very clear manner, suitable for dummies and worse. Which group I fall into, I don't know.

There's only one criticism I can offer so far:that a new edition is really called for, because many of the references and menus are using a previous version of the GIMP. They've now spread out the tables into one or two wider headings, which are easy to find with a bit of brain. But as I say, a new edition would definitely not go amiss.

So I again express my gratitude to Dr Bunks for his monumental efforts and labours on behalf of us dummies and worse. And what's more, the book is free online! Wonders never cease, but daily increase....Though it's far easier to have a printed copy to work with and go backwards and forwards like anything.

I've got a couple of friends who have dark skin and splendid white beards.

What I'd like to do is produce a picture of them with the face in silhouette ie blacked out, and the beard alone in full glory.

Every time I've tried to do that, I get the beard all right, but the facial details aren't blacked out.

I've tried spot metering it, and used the one colour function, but same old, same old....

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks guys. I guess what I'm thinking about is a computer rendering of a picture which makes it look like a 3D effect as above.

I'd really like to know how to do that.

But thanks very much for your input so far.

I mean pix like this: