I fear that the increase to that is imminent... in one of the SRS eBay listings for the 540, it says

If it says 'large', I bet it will be.

I have one of these, and it's not bad. The one I use is very similar, but it has an additional bit that goes round the wrist and makes it impossible to drop.

Here are a few pics: pic1 pic2 pic3

It's never off the camera, and cost me £9 IIRC, including postage from Hong Kong.

Completely revolutionised my life, it did. I'd never go back to a strap now.

Edit: a thought occurs... the K7 has a different strap attachment, doesn't it - needing D-rings, and those silly protector things to make sure that the D-rings don't scratch the body. How do people find using those?

Glad you've got it Ok, thanks for a smooth transaction. Hope you like it - look forward to seeing some results from it!

My turn to be excited now, I have an FA50 F1.4 on the way

I'd add a couple of things to this, based on my experience with the Sigma 10-20 and K10D.

I assume because of the extreme depth of field you get at very wide angles, even if you're using something with contrasty edges, the AF can think that no focusing is required, even when the distance from the camera to the subject has changed quite a bit since the last time the AF operated.

To ensure that it will refocus on the new subject, I'll usually make it focus on something very close first, to ensure that it starts by being grossly out of focus, thus forcing the AF to do some work.

The other thing to be careful of at extreme wide angles is the 'focus and reframe' technique if you want to focus on something that isn't in the centre of your composition. The distance from the subject to the focal plane changes as you move the camera, and as the angle of view increases with decreasing focal length, this error becomes larger.

But for something like that, would you really want to fix it in the camera rather than the computer?

Of course. But all the cable, remote and delayed modes switch SR off, regardless of the switch position. So unless you're physically pressing the button to release the shutter immediately, moving the SR switch to 'off' affects nothing.

It's only with finger release (non delayed) that the whole "does SR cause blur" has any relevance at all, hence my question.

PM sent.

Maybe do it panning in only one dimension first. Standing by the side (preferably on the inside of a curve - see below) of a reasonably busy road should do it - just photograph the cars as they come by.

I'd suggest small apertures and slowish shutter speeds.

Small apertures will maximise the depth of field, thus minimising focus errors and making it easier to distinguish between subject movement and camera shake.

Slowish shutter speeds, since you want to give the SR something to do, but not so slow that it's too difficult to pan accurately.

Ideally, for the first series of tests, you also want to be at the centre of an arc (eg on the inside of a curve), so that the angular velocity of the passing subject is approximately constant, rather than peaking as it goes past.

If you can tell the difference between SR on and off in that situation, it might be worth repeating it when the cars go past on a straight piece of road, since that will superimpose the peak in angular velocity from panning, on to whatever shaking the SR is attempting to correct for.

This is quite a tricky experiment to do in a way that eliminates all the effects except the ones you're specifically trying to compare (not least the fact that your technique will improve a lot with the practice you get doing the experiment, and this in itself could easily skew the results).

Not to mention the anti-terrorist officers that will no doubt swoop down and tell you you're acting illegally.

Out of interest, are there any tripods (and the attachment between them and the camera) that are so rigid, that even physically pressing the button to release the shutter causes no shake at all?

I ask, because my own tripod most definitely is not that rigid.

It's perfectly rigid enough for there to be no visible shake when using any of the remote or delay modes, but for longish exposures of say 1/15s or more, the finger-induced shake is very obvious, and as I reported some time ago, if there is such a thing as SR-induced blur, it is negligible in comparison.

I still think the whole "SR causes blur" (on tripods, monopods, or anywhere else) idea is a myth, and is a product of Pentax's poorly explained recommendations, coupled with Matt's finding that unstabilised SR is very bad, that as Peter says is quite likely often the case.

As an aside, it's perfectly possible to provoke SR into behaving badly, by dialling in a focal length that's much longer than the length of the actual lens - so that it interprets a small vibration as requiring an enormous compensation - but that's another red herring IMO.

Well it is, but it's the typical 'make sure you don't really explain anything' kind of marketing stuff that you also get in the manual, which also annoyingly fails to actually explain anything.

The crucial bit is

So it works, but they recommend you switch it off?

With a panning shot, of course, just as with any other handheld shot, there isn't any shake 'more than by hand', so SR not 'appropriately compensating' for such vibration is irrelevant here.

Camera shake 'more than by hand' would be the sort of thing you get by accidentally holding the camera against something that's already suffering a high frequency vibration (such as an aircraft canopy while taking aerial photos).