Travelling

Thanks Jim and everyone great advice. Yep re tripod, I have a compact manfrotto carbon fibre that I have used on other excursions and have a lowepro dry zone, albeit it is on the large side and may look at smaller option. I'll check our SRS today. Investment in the Tc may be a good option as I could then extend the reach on the 300 when out in the UK.

Very interesting, I was told the 1.4x wouldn't work with the 18-135 wr lens, is that erroneous ?

What do you mean by "wouldn't work"?

A 1.4x teleconverter is recommended for use with lenses of F4 and faster. On slower lenses the autofocus may not work (although you can resort to manual focus). The 18-135 goes from F3.5 to F5.6 so it may struggle a bit. May be ok on a good bright day, but in poorer light then probably not.

That's what I was told!

Never noticed a problem on the K-R or K-30 in general daylight use, but will try on all 3 current bodies in bad light in the next few days and report back!

I've just done a few very subjective tests on the 18-135 + Kenko 1.4 Pz T/C on all three bodies in my bedroom with the lights at different levels.

It did autofocus at the lens's 135mm setting at levels for exposures something like 1/10th @ F5.6 (= F8 with the - 1 stop reduction caused by the T/C) at 3200 ISO on the TAV setting - so it was pretty dark! - on all three bodies, albeit VERY slowly and the green hexagon did come up most times - but the image quality was pretty dire most of the time and so the actual focus point may well not have been correct! I think the lock-on speed order was the K-3, K-30 and K-5 (Mk 1) from fastest to slowest, but there was not much difference between the K-3 and the K-30.

Once the light levels were raised to normal room lighting levels, all three bodies locked on pretty quickly and accurately.

So this KENKO (also sold as a Tamron in Europe and under other names elsewhere) Pz T/C will work with the 18-135 at some pretty low light levels, let alone in daylight!

John