It's not a problem for mine - I just screw it into the bottom of the grip, which has a tripod socket on the bottom. It's the same as screwing the QR into the bottom of the camera, albeit not quite as rigid as without it, since the grip attachments has a small amount of play.

But I've used it lots on the tripod, and in practice it's not a problem.

Glad you've got a working solution.

I use one of these.

Absolutely brilliant, the best tenner I've spent on camera gear.

It can. The one thing I find that makes PF a whole lot worse is when the twigs are against an overexposed sky, as they are in this case.

One of the biggest culture shocks when I switched to digital from film was discovering that I had to expose for the highlights, not the shadows.

Now that I've got the hang of getting the sky exposure more or less right (most of the time), and boosting the shadows on the computer if there's a lot of contrast in the picture, I find PF a lot less troublesome.

I'm sure this is true, and I'm not at all criticising the lens (since I'm even less qualified to know how good it is), or your technique.

I'm amazed it's possible to make a 10mm lens at all, considering how far the rear element has to be from the sensor plane, let alone a 10mm zoom, and let alone one that produces results as good as this.

I'm just curious, since with any extreme lens, there have to be compromises, and some CA may be one of the inevitable ones. A bit of PhotoShop admin seems a very small penalty for such a compromise.

Is the CA at 10mm typical for such lenses?

As John says, this is indeed normal - and "slide, thunk" is an excellent description.

I think you'll find this is normal too

Haven't K100D owners also reported this quiet thunk from inside when they rotate the camera? It doesn't have an orientation sensor IIRC.

I got a Michael Freeman book - Close up Photography, and a Stofen omni-bounce for my Samsung AF-540.

I'll experiment, but any tips on using the latter would be appreciated.

For general/beginner use, the best auto combination with the K10D and the AF540 is P-TTL, leading curtain sync (the default), and Program mode (or X).

Better even than that is fully manual, until you've got your head round how it all works, because then all the things that affect whether or not your photograph is correctly exposed will at least make sense, even if (like me) you can't remember to bear them all in mind all the time.

All the X-sync speed is, is the shortest exposure (that is, the fastest shutter speed) for which the shutter is completely open for the whole exposure.

Therefore the flash, whose duration is far, far shorter than that time, will illuminate the entire frame, while the shutter is open.

Only if you absolutely have to have a shorter exposure than this, do you need high speed sync, in which mode the flash emits a burst of flashes during the transit of the gap between the shutter curtains across the frame.

(If this is not entirely clear to you, it might be an idea to read up on how focal plane shutters work, in particular at exposures shorter than the X-sync speed, since not much will make sense unless you understand this.)

The sections in the K10D manual on flash photography are also worth reading, despite the fact that it's now slightly out of date since Pentax introduced some new features with recent firmware releases, notably the ability to use the built-in flash as a wireless master.

And read Matt's excellent article here.