The Ammonyte's shell is currently parked in Farnham Royal, which is NOT in Slough!

I have just recieved an email from Mairead Byrne of Hahnel, who make batteries and battery grips for a range of kanikons, which allow the user to choose between Li-ion and conventional AA batteries. They currently do not have any plans for a similar battery grip for the K10D, but, she says, "In saying that we are constantly updating our Battery Grip range, therefore please keep an eye on our website www.hahnel.ie for new product updates"

So that's a "No, well maybe", or I could just be optimistic!

I have the 6MP Optio WPi, for the same reason - wet mountains. Very happy with it and SWMBO took hers swimming (involuntarily) in Basingstoke Canal and both camera and lady functioned correctly afterwards!

Just noticed that some clever geezer from 'round these parts got another "Editors Choice" on Ephotozine http://www.ephotozine.com/gallery/showlargepic.cfm?photoid=791714&start=0&time=0&ignore=1#cmnt

Well done Matt!

Were they into rallying? There are a Liz and Peter Cox listed as the Membership secretary for the BTRDA http://www.btrdarally.com/contacts.asp

Just a thought - the claims for 500 shots from the battery only talk about flash use - no mention of what prolonged used of Shake Reduction or having the sensor cleaned each time you start the camera up each time.

On my third use of the battery I got over 500 shots - and that was with SR + cleaning!

I think I recall that when Ni-Cads were all the rage the battery needed to be "conditioned" by several cycles of charge/discharge before they would charge to full capacity. I don't know if this also applies to Li-ion batteries.

UPDATE:-

Just finished recharging the battery (pentax original) I put a voltmeter on it and it registers 11.7 volts - you'd need a lot of AA's to get that! BUT - why is the 11.7v different from the 7.4 v on the battery?

I only got 330 shots from the battery the first time I used it, and not many of those were taken with the built-in flash, which is a long way short of the 500 normally claimed for the camera. However on second use I am past 500 shots and still have 3 bars showing!

Note that if you use the remote control for long exposure bulb shots, you have to keep the button pressed down, and I doubt that'll do much to the battery life in the r/c unit!

Ooops. Sorry - I have difficulty in telling my right and left. The bright object top right in the top picture is definitely Venus, The smudge I'm not sure about.

What time was the picture taken? I'll plug it into Winstars www.winstars.net/english and see what comes up.

EDIT:-

Now we are so far OT this is more ET. I took a guess that the pic was taken at 16:55, Jan 20, plugged that into winstars (hey it's free!) and:-



Looks like it might be the star "Nashira"

Dan,

That is probably Venus.