Nope.

The significance of the 'A' setting is that the camera can tell the lens what aperture to set. It has no knowledge of the aperture that is set on pre-A lenses.

There are a number of restrictions with the K10D and pre-A lenses. Wireless and slow speed sync are among them. Also look at p71 of the manual.

Maybe manuals aren't supplied to the North American market.

However, if you have one, you might care to look up 'Shake reduction' in the index. Page 67 and page 69 contain some helpful information.

If you don't have one, you can download it here.

This is the key.

One of the reasons scepticism is the order of the day whenever someone pipes up worrying about whether their kit is working properly is that an extraordinary number of people a) don't read the manual, and b) take 'test' shots that prove nothing.

But of course, sometimes something goes wrong, and the problem is real.

Glad you've got a working camera now!

How did the term "shutter speed" ever come to be coined, anyway? Surely even when they opened and closed completely for every exposure, they always did so at the same speed, just leaving the hole in the middle open for longer or shorter times?

I think it's mandatory, these days, George.

Well, I don't have that lens, but I do use polarisers.

I have two, a Cokin P and a Hoya 72mm.

And, heretical though this may be, they are both linear polarisers, and they both work fine with my K10D. I've noticed absolutely no problems with either AF or metering, both of which are supposed to be messed up in dSLRs (and presumably, AF fSLRs) with LPs.

I had them from my film days and thought I'd give them a try before lashing out on the much more expensive CPs. And very glad I am that I did...

ISTR others here saying that they've used LPs with Pentax dSLRs too with no problems...

No guarantees though - I'm just saying what I've found.

Has anyone here had any actual evidence that with a decent, say, UV filter, the image really is degraded in any noticeable way, compared with no filter?

Other than maybe a bit of vignetting, perhaps, at very wide angles.

Or is it just a theoretical thing?

It's hard to say without knowing what the flower looks like.

But in general, I think that if you think you might have overdone any edit, you probably have.

It's very important, in these days of incessant change, much of it bad, there there are still institutions that we can rely on.

We should thank George for being one..

Anyway, specially for George:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Chris5gd/SimonAndNicoleSKittens/photo?authkey=25Bn7F...

Technically, it's not my pet, so it should be Ok

Have a good one, everybody.. Merry Christmas, all.

I think this is the right decision.

If you're behind a hardware firewall (such as you'd get in a router), you don't visit dodgy websites, and you don't need things that those under 25 would think are trendy and cool, then the only reason for Vista is if you enjoy adding things to your PC that slow it down for no benefit.

I'm quite sure it's not as bad as the people on DPR-equivalent PC forums might have you believe, but my (small software) company isn't in any rush to support Vista, at least until SP1 comes out next year.

No discredit at all to Chirpy, but with the shake reduction of the K10D (and his GX10), this isn't at all amazing. You'd expect to need 1/750s or faster to avoid camera shake with a 500mm lens with an APS-C sensor, and he's used shutter speeds from 1/250 to 1/1000.

The shake reduction on the K10D really is that good - so this is exactly what you'd expect. In fact, I think he'll find that with practice he'll get better still, which is what I found with my 400mm lenses hand held - I started off getting results better than I ever could with film; now it's a lot better.