This Nikon ad, of course!

Good for you!!

get the dogs their own camera ... and make it a point-and-shoot!

OP's don't need to rate the responder, just the response. Some thing like: "Thanks, that was helpful. I give it a 77"

Responders might strive to be more helpful with each succeeding response.

Actually, Kylan you can be forgiven for not realizing this is for adults over 18 - since so few act like adults.

Behind the anonymity of the keyboard it seems we all regress to the 4th grade and the characters that come out are the same ones you used to see at recess.

We have the class clowns, the bullies, the smart-alec's that no one likes, the loudmouths, the mean girls (of either sex), the teacher's pets, the shy ones, the snipers who run and hide, the sarcastic ones, the suck-up's, those that pretend they want to help but really want you to always lose at dodgeball so they can rescue you, and finally, the very few you would consider worthy of your attention who consistently offer a rare nugget of value.

rpavich was correct- it IS dysfunctional. Please do not model yourself after what you've just experienced here. I'm glad that you had the courage to speak out. Someone has to be the adult. Frankly, I hope you don't get booted. Your perspective is valuable.

Anyhow, Kylan, there you go. Those are the kids who are in here. There are probably others I missed. And it IS hard to sort them all out without getting yourself clobbered (just watch what happens to my note here!)

But, as one poster said, it's all very simple for us if we want to make this an easier place to learn:

If someone doesn't ask for a critique, don't give one. If you do, be kind and polite about it.

If you offer an opinion, own it. Don't state it as a fact. And don't argue with someone else's opinion that was given to an original poster, not to you. That's called hijacking the thread - it happens here ALL THE TIME. If you simply want to weigh in on someone else's opinion, that's just noise pollution.

I suspect the hurtful BS that's seems to be on the increase would decline quickly if OP's would rate on a scale of 0-100 the helpfulness of each response they generate. Wouldn't it be revealing to discover just how much value we are giving to those who actually want help?

Maybe not as much as we think.

A few other thoughts, Dave:

1) Use shutter time delay on your camera to give lens a couple seconds to settle.

2) It's remarkable how much vibration can run up the legs of even the heaviest tripod. Unless you're on a cement floor, didn't touch the camera and held your breath, you can send shivers up the tripod's leg by breathing that will effect a 600 focal length. Is your floor rock solid?

Some bird photographers will reduce that problem by draping their other hand across the top of the lens and pressing downward a bit.

3) For critical sharpness in the field, focus with "live view" enlarged to its highest setting, if your camera allows. Quite helpful in low light. You'll also see just how much vibration is actually traveling up the tripod.

4) You do not have the center leg of the tripod extended, do you? If so, that can be your problem. A raised center leg will cause loss of stability.

5) Don't assume the adage "turn off IS when on tripod" to be necessarily true. Test it on your gear when there's nothing at stake. You may be surprised to discover that leaving it turned on actually helped.

...and they evidently find flies to be rather tasty as well!

one fly down, one to go!

me, too/

Just a thought. This article was from 2005, nearly 7 years old. I wonder if compression algorithms today are still the same.

Thanks for setting me straight.

Someday I'll have to learn to follow my own advice:
"Never teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you and annoys the pig!"

My own desktop monitor is a calibrated LCD (Samsung 2232). My Ipad2 as well. I calibrate both with the Spyder 3 spectrometer. So I would assume laptop LCD is just as susceptible to color drift and correction through calibration.

But I don't have any direct experience with laptop monitor calibration.

Wait until day time when the light from the monitor is a little better balanced with the light reflected off the paper. A grey-appearing paper that you know to be white may not indicate anything more than there's too little ambient light getting to the paper to make an eyeball comaprison.

Also, if you can, enlarge the white box on your screen so that it dominates the frame and minimizes the distracting yellow UHH background here. (Ctrl-Mousewheel Forward)

Then step away from the monitor and stare at the bright white paper until it appears white again to your eyes. Now when you look back at the white box on screen, does it immediately appear white? or a slightly different hue?

Because our eyes are built to adapt, they quickly and automatically correct for incorrect colors, eg sunglasses. And so on our screens we see white where we believe it to be, eg a wedding dress, even though our monitor may actually carry a light yellow or blue to our eyes instead.

Trouble starts when we want to warm up (add yellow to) an image when, unbeknown to us, our white point is yellow and we show it to someone else whose monitor has also drifted a bit to yellow... yikes, that girl on the beach gets a George Hamilton tan! - but only on the second monitor. If a third party's monitor is too cool (blue) the bathing beauty now looks spectacular!

I present the idea of a white box and paper to help someone decide if they need to calibrate, not to do the calibration.

For calibration you need to use a commonly available tool like Spyder 3 or ColorEyes or EyeOne Display or others. They run from about $150 to $250. It's a software and gadget combination where you run the software and the gadget (a spectrometer) measures your monitor and the software then adjusts your screen's colors to standard. Remember, though, once done you still have to do it periodically (at least 1/month) as the colors will drift.

A bit pricey, perhaps. But maybe you can borrow one from a friend... or if you had trouble finding one I do have a backup Spyder 3 Pro in original box that I'd be willing to sell.

Having recently seen some horrible attempts on UHH to help others correct colors in their jpg's, I am convinced that we have a widespread problem of many monitors being way off color standard, something that monitors have a tendency to drift from over time.

My calling the White 255 box, "polar bear in a snowstorm" was simply to invite attention to opening the thread in hopes of getting a discussion of color calibration going.

My mistake.

But hopefully some readers may get my too-subtle point and make use of the White 255 picture at the beginning to decide to re-calibrate their monitors.

Having a corrected monitor can make shooters happier with their photographs and eventually better photographers - if only after their careers in comedy are over!

Requests for or attempts at color correction can be more frustrating than helpful and can actually make matters worse if the requester and the helper aren't using a color-calibrated monitors. One man's yellow is another man's blue. (By the way men are frequently color-blind and, worse, Viagra alters your color perception, too! I'm just saying..)

The box below here is WHITE, i.e. 255 in all color channels - same as the 255 that blinks your camera's histogram when white is blown out.

If this box on your screen isn't WHITE, or extremely close to it then you should probably have your own monitor color-calibrated. (Hint: compare to a piece of copy paper next to your screen)

Hope this saves some frustration for members of the UHH community.

Polar Bear in a Snow Storm

Can't speak for the others here. But I used curves in Photoshop to first color correct the whole image and then the selection tool to isolate and boost the bkg colors.