Please don't do this - you're overlooking one key point. New signups to the forum cannot send PMs for 30 days. In that situation, it could stop a buyer from buying, and stop a seller from selling!

It actually happened to me a couple of weeks ago, when I was still new. I wanted to buy a lens and a flash from someone, and had to put a post in the thread telling the seller I couldn't PM him yet! He saw it and PMed me (luckily I was able to receive it, and to reply), and we completed the sale (and a jolly good sale it was too).

So - unless you're going to lift the ban on PMs for noobies, don't lock the Classified threads, please.

I would say the Classifieds are quite adequately policed as they are, and if sellers have problems with buyers (or non-buyers) posting stuff they're unhappy with, let them take their own action. It's their thread, after all, and their sales pitch. If they let it get misconstrued or hijacked, or feel undermined by someone pointing out why their overpriced junk isn't selling, and they don't report the post(s), then that's their lookout surely?

Caveat Vendor, for once, eh?

Just to clarify - CS4's Photoshop *does* deal directly with RAW files, but via an automatic Adobe plugin/widget/import-tool called (uninspiringly) Camera RAW, I think.

You may find you need to update your Photoshop installation to get it working with Pentax PEF files though - mine didn't do them by default, but now whenever I load up a PEF, I automatically get taken to the Camera Raw interface first.

TBH, they're all much of a muchness - Adobe's Camera Raw for PS, Adobe Lightroom 3's RAW importer, even Pentax's own DCU4 - they all do basically the same job of enabling you to mess with the RAW in an attempt to rescue/tweak it before down-converting to a JPEG or some other format which you can't go back from (unless you've kept an original, of course). I've not seen anything in Lightroom's 'RAW' input pages that you can't do in PS-CS4's Camera Raw, both offer ultimately the same tools as Pentax's own.

Your tactic of sticking to what you know is probably best, imho - comfort with the software will help you make better choices, for sure.

Tricky one, this. I don't feel comfortable (yet) using words like banal - but that's because I'm new here still, and don't think I've earned the right.

Pauly, on the other hand, is an old hand here, and has 'veteran's rights' (which I'm sure he'll deny, of course ) - but I have to say I totally agree with everything he said, plus his crop of the top shot (which is my favourite overall).

Without his crop, the lines in the top shot definitely lead the eye out to the right, and draw attention to the dark spot top right, which diminishes the effect of the black hole (which is a perfect analogy).

I liked Worn End next best, but for me there's a slightly-annoying whiter line that starts at around 7 o'clock on the clock face, and comes inwards, almost acting as a lead-line, but then it does an unconventional swerve away from the centre subject, and sorta vanishes away into a line going 11 o'clockish. That bit just bugs me, a tad, and I'd be tempted to tone it down/clone it out, and concentrate on the otherwise beautiful convergence of the rest of the shot.

Timber Crumble, I think I would like more if there wasn't that 'hairy bit' in the lower-centre area, and I would absolutely want to chop out the whitish area at the bottom left (which completely distracts the eye). Certainly, without those, the top half/two-thirds make an attractive 'layer cake' effect (which I initially saw as like the top of an apple crumble, and figured that was what had influenced your choice of name for the shot).

Crud Catcher, honestly, does nothing for me at all. I don't hate it, but I don't like it much either. The lead-lines are all too spurious, and lead out of the shot, not in. I don't think placing anything in the V as a 'focal point' would've helped much, and would've been too 'obvious'. Perhaps controversially (but honestly, though) the human male in me realises I'm not used to seeing that shape, in that orientation. Rotate it 90 degrees clockwise, and you'll see what I mean. THAT shot, for perfectly explicable and clichéd, obvious male-orientated reasons, is much more compelling! How shallow am I? I'd be tempted to change its name, though, if you display it that way round...

Excellent work. The first shot isn't to my taste - but only because it so accurately represents what it is - a slimy wet fish with its gob open. Every globule of goo is there, working its hardest. A fishmonger's calendar shot, for sure - but the crispness of that mouth is enough to turn my stomach... but that's simply my 'emotional' response to a perfect technical shot, one could say.

I much prefer the second shot, because it's a big tease. At first I looked at it as a flower study - perfectly crisp focus, nice background defocus, yet with a hit of the stem below and nicely framed defocussed greenery to the sides. Very nice, classic shot of a flower (I shan't embarrass myself by trying to identify its type!).

Then I noticed 'something' about the stamens in the middle... something was drawing my eye to them, and it genuinely took a few seconds before I could 'declutter' what I thought I was seeing, and resolve first the top hoverfly, and then its wings, and then the second hoverfly below that one.

This is what I meant about it being a tease. It turned a perfect flower study into an insect wildlife macro shot, but it didn't do it all at once... it was like a 'magician's reveal'. Very clever.

Of course, now I can't not see the hoverflies, now that I know they are there... but for that instant moment of first viewing, there was that sense of 'something you couldn't quite put your finger on' - and then you realise why.

Well done!

And how come I never find top grade glass for peanuts at car booties? I think I need to get up earlier...

Good for you, Jon... I must confess if I'd shot #3, I would be having that printed out poster-sized and put on a wall. I really do think it's a keeper.

And can I be really rude for a moment? Going by the Old F*rt's Rule Book of Composition, I don't think there's a single rule which isn't being broken in that photo:

- The lead-lines from the kerb and bollards on the left lead sort of backwards into the shot, almost sorta 'outwards' and nowhere (except to the GCS, but that's not really the subject, imho).

- And they start in a corner which is supposedly a no-no.

- The taxis (and even the coke dray) all imply movement out of the frame, down and towards the bottom right, rather than leading you in to finish on a subject.

- There's practically no use of 'thirds' or 'Golden Mean': the end of the wall of the building on the right is practically central in the frame, as is the whacking girt 'Coke' logo, smack-dab in the centre. Only the farthest-left taxi could possibly be construed as 'thirds', and that's not the principal subject (imho, the Coke dray is, specifically, its logo, and the cart with the crates of bottles).

- The perspective of the GCS and its arches leads straight to the aforementioned wall of the building on the right - drawing the eye, once again, bang in the centre.

- Even the itsy skyscraper in the background is rudely central, in defiance of the 'rules'!

It is, without doubt, a masterclass in the principles evoked (I hope) in the Douglas Bader quote my signature, and for that, you should be duly proud!

For all its rule-breaking, defiant, arguably 'wrong' composition, I really LOVE this photo. Coming back to it again today has merely reinforced my feelings from the first time's viewing. I *almost* was going to ask to buy an A3 print of it myself - except that that would be embarrassing (and not least of which, I don't have the wall-space at the moment, I can't afford it, and we're moving house soon, I hope!) .

But nonetheless... to me, it's an iconic representation of everything NY downtown, downhome American: the arrival of the daily Coke 'fix', on its big ole Mack truck.

Please, do something with this shot. Sell it to Coke. Make money out of it. Display it. See it on a billboard outside GCS, or St Pancras. That'd make my day! It's a beaut.

Then go out and break some more rules, you jammy b*gg*r!

I'm confused... I have a K-x, which uses the same software as your K-7 - Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4, as you rightly said.

However, the latest version is not 2.07... it's version 4.21

http://www.pentax.jp/english/support/download_digital.html#soft

Daft question, maybe, but are you sure you're grabbing the right thing?

Thanks for the tips, Jon - I will look into Topaz and will definitely let you know if I get a copy. I love that effect!

ROFL! I hadn't noticed that one, first time around. Bet the seller feels a right t*t!

Going back to what the OP asked, I bought one of these IR clones from ebay on Flossie's recommendation, from http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300446938388. It cost me about £2.60 or thereabouts, and arrived in less than ten days. My (and Flossie's) reasoning is that this is cheap enough to lose in a field on a dark night's astro-photoshoot, without really caring!

I've also just taken delivery of my genuine Pentax Remote Control F (paid £17.99 from my local independent camera shop), which is 'for best'. Sounds daft, but I'd promised I'd support the shop, and the Pentax brand, plus I'd already had the thing on back-order for a few weeks before I bought the ebay clone.

Both work fine.

However, if you have an old Palm PDA, you can download some free software that'll turn it into a Pentax remote, here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/prcf/

Works fine with my K-x!

And lastly, if you have one of those 'One for All' TV remotes, and you're geeky enough (hem-hem) to have a JP1 interface to connect it to your PC and program it, then there is a device overlay you can download for free from here:

http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=7495

You will need some other (free) software to download it to your TV Remote, and of course the appropriate cable... but you'll already have those, if you're 'into' JP1 programming anyway.

There you go. Short of employing a small child with a stick, or a Heath-Robinson mechanism involving a see-saw, a balanced egg, and a helicopter rotor, that's probably about all the methods available for triggering your K-x remotely! One of them should sort you!

Stunning shots. Fraid I have to echo past posts - the first's reflections and clouds are excellent, though the perfectionist in me would have wanted that flag to flutter up a bit more and show itself. Can't have it all ways, though - especially if the wind won't play ball.

The second shot is very 'DC Comics' to me - not sure where I'm getting that from, but it's what springs to mind. Like it a lot. I prefer your original version as posted (sorry I-Berg! )

My favourite is the last one. Iconic, is the watchword. It has just about everything you could possibly stick in a picture to make it say 'Noo Yoik'. Yellow Taxis (albeit the new ones - I take it there are no Checker Cabs left?), Gran' Central, skyscrapers and of course the ubiquitous Coca˜Cola dray. Love it.

Love the comic processing effect, especially. Please tell... in as many steps as it takes... how d'you do it?