Hi Alex
While I'm definitely trying to use light to better advantage now, I wish I had a lot of tecnical tricks to share. I will tell you what I THINK I know, from reading, and from trial and error.
I used to think that to take a picture with lots of shadow, like the saddle, meant taking a picture in conditions without much light. But that's not true. That just leads to an overall underexposed, blurry picture because of camera shake.
What you need is good intense lighting, but directional lighting. For me, in that room, it was sunlight, coming from under the pull shade. The window was 4 feet tall. The shade was pulled down all but 6 inches. There was still plenty of light in that room and on that saddle, yet it came from one direction,from the right and slightly below the saddle, there was not ambient light relecting everywhere.
The other thing that I do is use the EV compensation. Why? Because it's the only manual adjustment on the 2800 besides white balance!
Seriously, though, I find that if I turn down the EV , as long as there is enough light to begin with, it can make a big difference later on.
Because - and here is the sordid truth - that "special " quality of light becomes revealed only after post processing. Don't get me wrong - you can see the effect in the raw picture. But it is not until you do levels, and bring contrast up, brightness way down, color up, etc that the full effect is drawn out.
i think the EV compensation can help here often--it enriches colors while helping to avoid overexposure as it evens out the light exposure across the picture. Somehow it seems to make the whole process of achieving more contrast without harshness easier to attain.
As far as a tripod - I used one for the saddle picture, but the barn pics were handheld - which was stupid, quite frankly.
The thing that seems to stand out for me with your pictures is the
quality of light that seems to come through.. and I'm trying
desperately to figure out why, given I have a camera that should be
able to take pictures in that kind of light at least as well at the
2800z..
The only thing that springs to mind is that I don't currently use a
tripod; would you be able to reveal if you do? If not, do you have
any tips for taking pictures in locations such as that barn
(obviously it was a bright day outside..)
Cheers
-Alex
--
Gingerbaker
http://www.pbase.com/gingerbaker/galleries 
