There's a local photographic society which I'm thinking of joining, and they invite prospective members to a few meetings so that they can see if they like it.

So last night they had a studio session, which meant they had a model (an opera singer hoping to get some publicity photos), a room in a church hall, a big roll of black paper, and some studio flash units.

The way it worked was that each person got ten minutes to move the lights about, pose the model, and take some pictures.

It all looked rather scary - I've never used studio lighting before, much less taken pictures while being scrutinised by a bunch of other photographers. So I spent most of the session waiting in terror, watching while they got her to do all kinds of fancy stuff (singing, dramatic hand gestures, holding flowers, etc), and then had my go.

I decided, out of necessity, to keep it as simple as possible, so I sat her on a chair, and since she was blonde, pointed this thing they called a snoot at her hair, and put the other two lights one more or less in front, and the other off to the side.

Then I talked to her about her singing competitions and took some pictures while we were talking.

Here are some of the results. C&C (doesn't have to be especially gentle) gratefully received - it wasn't quite the disaster I'd feared, but I have to say it was all a bit of a rush. I'd particularly welcome suggestions for how to set the lights up so that the relatively harsh shadow area on the right hand side of the last two photos can be softened. I thought maybe just move the front light a bit closer, but I'm really just guessing.













Now that I've had a go, I can see how I'd benefit from a much longer, less pressurised session where I could experiment and really think about what was going on.

I'm not aware of a "stop them releasing the shutter when there's no card in the camera" function.

There's a big "No card in the camera" display across the LCD, and a row of dashes in the viewfinder where it usually displays the number of shots remaining, and a crossed out card symbol on the LCD if you do take a picture - but no actual means of preventing you doing it AFAIK.

I can well imagine missing those if you've got it up to your eye the whole time.

I wonder if there was a reason for this. Does Remote Assistant let you get pictures from the camera without a card in it?

Happy to take any that you're given off your hands, then, John

Yours was my personal favourite of the lot this week, Tim, absolutely superbly timed, framed and exposed. I won't let on to Lilly how fast it was going at that moment, though

Yak 50. Compton Abbas, Dorset.

Well I have one of these, and it's my single most used lens. I'm sure it's not the best optically, but the results I get from it are limited by my abilities far more than its quality.

I think you need to define more precisely what you mean by "good enough for the K10D" in terms of your needs. It both is and isn't, depending on what you need.

If you need a good all-rounder, it's very good indeed, although I find myself wishing for a bit more at the wide end sometimes, in which case I'll usually switch to the 18-55, which is also limited by my abilities more than by its optics.

If the new Pentax 18-250 really is mostly the Tamron, then it might well suffer from the same barrel distortion at the wide end, which is quite noticeable if you have architecture (with vertical walls) filling the frame to the edges, but unless you're doing a lot of that (and it's correctable in software anyway), the Pentax 18-250 with its SMC coatings is probably going to be another very good all-rounder.

Quite honestly, "feeling" and "wondering" about the quality of a lens you use suggests that like me, it's the bit behind the body not in front of it, that could do with improving first.

I just tried mine with the K10D.

It was reliable up to about 40 feet from the back of the camera, and up to about 30 feet from the front.

I'm not sure if the difference is significant, since I just put the camera on the floor so the sensor angle would have been different front to back. I'll try it again with a proper mount if you like, but in any case, it managed 20 feet plus easily.

Sounds like it's working fine.

The camera cannot read the aperture from the lens, unless the lens is set to A (which K and M lenses don't have). So the "--" in the viewfinder is as you'd expect.

To meter, set the camera to manual, select your aperture on the lens, and press the green button, as Tyr said earlier. If the K100D is the same as the K10D in this respect, it will stop the lens down, take a meter reading, and set the appropriate shutter speed.

Well on that roadmap, the DA* 60-250 is also shown, which is more modest in zoom range, is SDM, and will presumably be very good optically.

I guess they're trying to open up clear water between the DA* series and what might be aimed more at the consumer level.

I wonder what that DFA 645 55mm is doing there still, now that they've effectively cancelled the 645D.

You're a bad man !!!!

But since you're so incredibly helpful (many thanks again ) I'll pretend I didn't see this