When I was scanning in photographs from my visit to London, there were a few which had come out rather dark - either due to the flash not being powerful enough or the photo being taken into the light so the subject was underexposed. When these were scanned in, there was very little shadow detail and the image was quite grainy:

In order to reduce the grain and increase the detail, I decided to use a technique borrowed from astronomical image processing, called Image Stacking. I used a program called Registax (I actually used Version 2, V3 is out now but I haven't used it yet).
I scanned the image in 10 times and loaded them into Registax, allowing it to align and stack the images. The resulting image (below) shows a noticeable improvement in detail.

Among the Christmas presents I received from my parents last year was a hand held blender, which is ideal for making soups. Whenever I find any cheap vegetables, I tend to make a soup with them. The one here is the result of finding packs of Tesco vine tomatoes reduced to 10p because they were going out of date. In the freezer, we've got a pack of leeks which was bought reduced a few weeks ago. I chopped and froze them as soon as I got home.

Recipe

• 3 Red Onions
• 3 Potatoes
• one pepper (red, green, orange, whatever you've got)
• 5 or 6 cloves of garlic
• a few dozen small tomatoes
• a handful of chopped leeks
• chicken stock
• 2 bay leaves
• mixed herbs
• salt and pepper

Quarter the onions and potatoes, coarsly chop the pepper, toss in olive oil and roast at 200°C for 40 minutes. After 20 minutes, cut the tomatoes in half. Add the tomatoes and garlic to the rest of the veg in the roasting tray. After the 40 minutes is over, tip the vegetables into a large pan. Add about a pint of water, the bay leaves, a teaspoon of mixed herbs, and some salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer until everything has started to go mushy and the potatoes are nice and soft. Remove the bay leaves and puree the soup. If it's a bit thick, it can be diluted with a little water or stock.