By Jove. I believe you caught 'em mate! Most excellent.

Is the story about the tattoo or the hootch that brought you there?

The Canon EOS 5D MkII has an iso setting range of 50 to 25,600. I'm not familiar with its counterpart in other cameras but my thinking is that there may not be another camera with that high an iso. In the event you are not that familiar with iso settings, the higher the iso, the lower light in which you can expect to get a usable image. That's what I have and I've had some real good luck with low light images. Whether or not it will adequately serve our wife's purpose, rent one and try it out but don't overlook it as an option.

Just let me add in another factor I failed to mention earlier as a consideration to online storage. First there's viruses that can hit online servers in spite of all the protection and, second, there's the element of destructive hacking for hacking's sake. Nobody is immune from those two issues.

Let me say one more thing without attaching any value judgement. I've seen my son and his company charge other companies $20,000 to retrieve just their accounting data from failed raid drives, drives that are supposed to be completely fail proof with redundant multiple backups. He has retrieved data for major universities, various government agencies, and all kinds of private companies. Of course, those are all tax write-offs but still, in lean times it robs profits. His prices were not out of line for the industry. He had friends at, and "went to school" on the worldwide leader of that industry, taking his prices right off their menu.

Thanks. You wanna put some blue behind and put it up here to show us what you have in mind, shade, and all. Now, I'm headed for the rack. You're sure up late there in WV. You act like a man who has the day off tomorrow. Congratulations and goodnight.

If I want to simply respond to the whole scene I hit "reply." When I want to reply to a specific post, I hit "quote reply" and then it includes the post you're responding to. I knew and what you were responding to but I sort of figured she's zonked by now, living on the east coast so I thought since it was my post originally, I respond just to keep you from feeling ignored. Everything's cool.

Well then, they'll awaken to a nice surprise in the morning. Something to get their day started. I'm not all that unhappy with the shots but wanted to get other reactions. If I were out there on those same spots I wouldn't do anything different. I've was in burst mode on the merganser so I've got the before shots and the after ones when she's out of the frame and this is my pick. Those things are quick and not easy for an old man to capture. I want it to look as tough as it was. The goose is another matter. I may have to tone down the settings in my camera some but I only own Elements 2 and don't really know it well enough to use it. I think I'm going the way of the PP. Thanks and good evening to you.

I hear it can light up a whole room. Never tried it. I have a high pain threshold and a lot of breakthrough pain which works hand in hand with my urge to not want to sleep. Vicodin might interfere with that relationship and I don't want that.

Thank you. I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy this thread. The merganser is an in camera crop. I didn't take anything off and shot it that way on purpose. I'd have to clone in more water in front and above her which will what, change the perspective and push back and diminish my attempt to get as much of the action in the frame as possible. I guess enough to back her up. How far? ...to the rule of 3rds point on the still short side of the pic? If you have the time, please pull it in and show me what you have in mind and put it back out here. I would sincerely appreciate it. There's violence connected with their landing and I was hoping to convey that they pretty much land out of control and nearly run off the end of the landing strip. I guess I missed.

Hey Don, I like what you've done and I still have room for yours and like mine as well. You brought out a lot more texture and it's very appealing and I feel that however start my contrast was has been equaled by your rendition. Often, it's easier for an person who is critiquing to disassociated from the scene more so than the person who took the shot and can be more objective regarding the correctness of an image in terms of composition when presented to an unbiased audience but your re-work, IMHO, moved the original too far from where it started out for my comfort. You did a nice quick and dirty remake and it is very appealing and overall in better balance, no doubt, but that's not what I saw or took a picture of. How's that? Tough enough?

Equipment lust is a terrible affliction. We probably need something like AAA only ELWT - Equipment Lust Withdrawal Training.

I just found another reason why I've been missing messages. I was in making a comment and when I came back out that message that dimmed when I clicked on it to go in and comment was missing and there was another message arrival notification there in bold lettering. I think what I discovered was that when there's a post made while your in that same thread, your "forum" notification for the previous message is replaced with a new "forum" in bold lettering. I sure hope I made that clear enough and don't confuse anyone with the way I said it.

Well, if I WERE YOU, and I got to feeling real sorry for myself 'cause I was feeling poor, I'd just get my pictures out and look at 'em for an hour or so. If that didn't cure you, nothing will.

Wouldn't surprise me but I'll tell ya, ya ain't goin' to Bermuda on whatever you win, if you do.

Beautiful, if not a little chilling. I'm really distraught that we have no Cardinals in this area. They're my favorite bird. Their pale-face look-alike, the Cedar Waxing also is a favorite of mine and we don't get those here either. I'm miffed.