One way to get rid of fungus in a lens is to leave it out, apeture wide open, on a foil surface, on a really sunny day. This has been known to clear up growths on lenses. I beleive it's the UV component or the sunlight that kills the fungus.

If that doesn't work, then you're looking at a repair bill, unless you feel confident to take the lens apart yourself.

I think generally any camera shooting jpeg will tag the file as 72 dpi. That has nothing to do with resolution, if you change the dpi to 300 without resampling you have the exact same photo, just the metadata has been tagged at 300 dpi.

I beleive shooting TIFF gives you 240 dpi, but as an old darkroom hound I have only shot RAW. I probably will never really need anything else, and with RAW it's the converter that sets the dpi.

If you're into seriously using a camera, professionally or not, the D is the one that is geared towards more serious users. If you can live with menu-diving, and the lack of easy control, then the other models will give you the same quality image.

I am waiting for the sucessor to the D, it'll be next fall according to rumors. Meanwhile, a few more consumer models are sure to come out.

Two companies that are held in high regard on this side of the Pond are B&H and Adorama. I have dealt with both of them for many years, and they are always on top of things.

I ordered a hood for my 45-125 zoom form them, it turned out it was only the outside part. They refunded my money, apologized for not knowing it was a two part hood (hardly anybody does) and never asked for the part back. They like to keep customers loyal.

I just used B&H to order the 12-24 and the 31mm (the return of the excellent fast normal, this one for the D).

Both of these companies are Jewish, I guess most of the camera dealers are. They are all closed on the High Holy Days.

For serious photography, the D is worth seeking out. For one, it uses the standrd Compact Flash cards that all the professional gear uses, it has the two wheels to control the camera, and in general is the professional-level model. If it's selling for the same price as the soccer-mom models, it's well worth chasing down!!


I 'm hoping the D2 shows up soon. It's sensor is being upgraded to 12 megapixels, whenever Sony gets to releasing the sensor (same sensor used in Nikon and Minolta DSLR's). I hope that if they decide to go with SD, they also leave a slot for COmpact Flash. Oly once had a camera with two slots, Compact Flash and Smarrt Media. It's not hard to do, and wouldn't add too much to the cost of the camera.

One can only hope they've learned their lesson, and will put the full KAF mount in the new camera. Many of us have M lenses, and the little lever that senses what the F stop on the M lens is set to is very important.

I have both lenses, and as far as I can tell they are optically the same. The A lens has a metal barrel, but there are electronics in it.

If you have a K-1000, either will do just fine.

Excellent!!

Well, I bought the Kenko set. It has seven contacts, plus the little stop down thingey so you can still use them on M cameras.

They're solidly built, the one thing I was worried about. But they are metal, and feel solid as anything. I think this is the best set available, not too cheap but you get your money's worth!

I don't think it would be possible to transmit autofocuis through the tubes unless the motor is in the lens, which would make for some prettty costly lenses. But other functions, like metering, are useful since it avoids having to do calculations for exposure compensation because of the extension.

I beleive the Kenko tubes will transmit all data. They claim aurofocus, but that has to be for brands that use a motor in the lens.

I have beeen researching extension tubes for my MX and *st D. Pentax makes "extension tube set B" but I get the impression that they don't have all the contacts to let the lens talk to the caera.

There is a well-regarded brand called Kenko whose tubes claim to maintain all functions (including autofocus, which I find a bit hard to beleive).

Has anyone here had experience with these brands of tube and what does each set actually allow you to do? I don't really care about autofocus but I'd like to use them with the excellent 100mm f/4 macro (that I bought from
George. Thanks, George, it's exactly what I wanted!). So any information would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!