The B&W is stunning.

That really shows with black and white.

I set the camera to Monochrome with a yellow filter.


BTW, is it wrong to be lusting over the Ricoh GR?

New toys are always good. And plus, they help us grow!

More latitude when selecting subjects.

You always give us nice things to look at.

#3 reminds me of a hippopotamus!

How do you go about determining if a used lens is a good purchase, especially if you can't examine it in hand before buying? I would like to upgrade to some quality Nikon lenses but I would also like to purchase used,if possible, as those suckers can be costly.

lens was a professional photographer that bought a similar lens, so he was selling it.

In all the years of buying at eBay, I've only had to return one item.

Do your homework on the lenses, and be patient.

Check out local camera stores and camera clubs.

Just do it. Shoot in color, then convert at home.

I suspect monochrome on your Nikon will be very good.

I'm going to start looking.

Any b&w I shoot now gets run through Silver Efex Pro 2, but I haven't really set about understanding the functions. The presets are nice, but in any event, I just need to learn and practice photography fundamentals. I still shoot way too much on auto.

Moving the slider will give instant enlightenment.

I shoot aperture priority, and set ISO at the lowest setting.

I don't have anything fancier than iPhoto and GIMP. I have LightZone and other software, but I'm comfortable with what I use. I do raw conversion and cropping in iPhoto, the final tweaks are done in GIMP.