But maybe Michaelangelo did For all we know, he was forever arguing down the pub with his mates over which brand of sable got the paint on more smoothly.

I think it's a bit rich that it's absolutely fine to discuss Pentax kit in the minutest detail here (I know, it is a Pentax forum!), but as soon as anyone else dares to suggest that Pentax isn't the best thing since sliced bread, suddenly it's "oooh it's not the kit, you could use the end of a bottle with a pinhole in front of it if the result was good".

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of Pentax kit, never having known anything else, and I'm getting increasingly annoyed over the bias that I do concede is evident in the magazines and elsewhere.

But it does all make me laugh a bit.

Sorry, I know I'm a bit of a heretic. Feel free to burn me at the stake...

I found it quite depressing that some people don't seem to be able to distinguish between "good" and "to their taste".

I've had quite a good look through Ben's recently posted galleries, and I'm not yet sure whether I like the work or not. But there's no doubting the quality of it, and the fact that it kicks off something of a storm of controversy is IMHO, a very positive point in its favour.

Sure, like my wireless mouse and its receiver (or transmitter, or whichever way round it is).

If you only have to do it once, fair enough, or if you use it with a different camera. But not every time you set up, I hope???

I confess I didn't go into it in enough detail to really understand. I still have this old-fashioned idea that hardware ought to be easy.

I was ferreting about on the Sigma website, and downloaded the manual for the SIGMA EF 500 DG ST/Super.

I kind of freaked out a bit when I read that to use the wireless slave feature, you have to do all this stuff like putting the unit on the camera first, then taking it off again, before you can tell it to be fired by the on-camera flash.

I thought (obviously wrongly) that sounded ludicrously complex, and gave up on flash units altogether.

Then I plucked up courage to visit the Pentax site, and discovered that the AF540 manual describes a very similar procedure.

I was a bit shocked to discover that the Pentax unit needs the same kind of admin.

But it left me thinking that the Sigma might be Ok after all.

Could you elaborate on why the ST isn't?

The thing that attracts me to the Sigma (the Super, I suppose, if it's the only one that's compatible) is that it's way more powerful than the AF360, and has a swivel head, which is a must for me, really.

And it's not 300 quid plus, like the AF540

SIGMA EF 500 DG ST/Super

Can anyone confirm whether these guns are really K10D compatible?

At http://www.sigmaphoto.com/flashes/flashes_flashes.asp, both of them have the K100D listed in their compatibility section, but not the K10D. However, they both claim PTTL capability.

At £90 and £145 respectively at Bristol Cameras, they're very reasonably priced in comparison with the Pentax PTTL guns.

I'd probably incline towards the Super, if I went this way, since it appears that the ST doesn't have a wireless facility. Not that I'm likely to use it all that soon, but you never know...

Any views would be appreciated.

It was JPG, regrettably, but either way I can't say I'm surprised.

I'd only had the '10 about three days when I took that... that's my excuse for it not really being up to scratch..

Not a duck..

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/IMGP0964ssh.jpg

Is the washed-out part easily salvageable?

I got a very prominent dust speck quite soon after I got the K10D.

The sensor shaker operated, but didn't shift it.

A fairly gentle blast from a rocket blower shifted it though, and amazingly, although I change lenses quite a lot, I haven't had any more (well no more obvious ones, anyway).

So so far, I'm not too impressed with the dust removal system, but I'm not planning any more rigorous tests than this one.

Yes, he suggests that it's a symptom of axial, rather than transverse CA (see my earlier post quoting that link).

I haven't had a chance to test his assertion that if it is axial CA, the fringing problem is less when the lens is stopped down.

Thanks for the Shay Stephens link.