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Incongruous - yes, but they sum up my weekend testing the 105 vr. Here is my first image post ever, of weekend in the Blue Mountains.

C+C welcome

Nice shots all around, I'm amazed how much pollen the bee carries around

Now for the picky stuff: shot #1 thereseem to be some blown highlights on the woman's neck, and also she looks a bit worried. Maybe you could have relaxed her more to get a better expression - unless you were going for this one of course!

Shot #3 is great, I'd have liked a bit more DOF to have all the metal bits in focus. What was the object?

Like I said, nice shots to look at, well done.

Thanks Cawdor
No. 1 is my Grandmother, or Mumi... and she is worried that the sky will someday fall on her head - so I chose it because it says more to me than a coaxed smile - though I know she doesn't agree - so don't please tell her I posted this.

No. 3 is a join in the drive belt of an old wood lathe, and I agree wholeheartedly about the DOF. I seriously spent about 10 secs shooting it. It looks like it will be there for a while yet if I want to get more shots in the future.

Try to play with the contrast in your B&W picture. I normally play with the channels in PP till I get the best I can get. Pictures 2 & 3 are good as they are - as far as I am concerned they are very good.

Thanks, now I'm re-evaluating the first image - those hilights are blown and I was shooting in the highly controversial JPG format... so they are gone. And as for the contrast - I was using the technique of having 2 hue saturation layers, the top one desaturated, and playing with the lightness values for various colour ranges to bring out areas of the image. Are you saying there is too little contrast? I am seriously not a portrait or documentary photographer, so I am genuinely asking - When I used BW film I loved grade 4 and 5 filters using multigrade paper for 'punch', but since then I have gained much more appreciation for detail.

For my taste, you could do with a little bit more contrast. But, again sometimes you can and others if you do you loose valuable details. Looking at your picture I see too much light on one side of the face and not enough dark shadows on the other. Now, if you can, I suggest you shoot in raw format and you will be amazed how you can change the white balance and the retouching you could do without altering the original. I am not a photographer either and remember taste is purely subjective.