Thanks
turtle. I'm looking forward to some comments when you have the chance. Good luck for your finals too.
One question - can you post a link to the Canon forum you joined? I know of dpreview, but I can't stand their forum layout (we are truly spoilt here
) and some of the comments are really inane. There's also photo.net but I don't know the community that well.
Btw, if you own Canon gear, one place I can recommend for reviews is
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ The lens comparison charts are particularly helpful.
re: the PhotoShop critique.
For some reason, I can't see your image in this thread - but when I went to your personal site I was able to locate it. Harsh lighting aside, it looks great - the clean white in front of the green background makes for a nice contrast. Also, I had to come back here to read what she was in front of originally, so your care with isolating here from her surroundings certainly paid off.
However, I have a few questions about the background: Are the foreground trees a separate layer from the background mountain? They seem quite distinct, particularly at the left edge. Is there some noise around there? Also, as much I as I like the shot of the girl being in front of the scenery, I wonder about the lack of background "life" artefacts - like a rug, or kid toys nearby. She just seems to have been planted there. Actually, on closer inspection, I think it is because she is in focus as are the trees in the background too. That's a pretty impressive dof - perhaps that's what makes it stand out in my mind. Maybe if the background were to be blurred a bit, that would help lessen the perceived juxtaposition.
[EDIT]
GSpotter is on the money - the meadow goes out of focus and then the trees are in focus. That's a more accurate description of the problem! That said, I don't think your "average Joe" would pick it up.