Been a while since I've picked up a camera, the 2nd Dec to be precise so had a play with some Lily's the Mrs. purchased to bring a little colour indoors.

All with a Pentax 120mm macro and added a 40mm extension tube for the stamen's close up, all natural light and up to a 6 second exposure.

Superb capture Rob, we're you at 450mm or closer and even at the high ISO, the details very good

Barrie, I hope you don't mind, had a quick play in PS,

A quick selection with the pen tool, feather then a levels adjustment on the whites. took no more than 90 seconds, hope it looks ok on here.

Having seen these results this is something I think worth a try, I also agree with your choice of chocs, Mrs M8 and I are rather partial to the brand

Well shot, superb bokeh and the berberis just edges the thorny bush for me

Try downloading the update again just incase it corrupted and recommend you follow the instructions to the letter. its a while since I've updated any camera firmware, but its fairly easy.

btw - the link to the firmware didn't work, I have found the update and it worked fine, just drag the BIN file to your SD card and follow the instructions.

Locate the extracted .BIN file and copy it to the root (top level i.e. outside of any folder) of a formatted SD card

Insert the card into your camera and ensure it is fully charged

Turn the camera power on while pressing the MENU button

Select "Yes"at the firmware prompt

Once the screen displays "Complete", turn off your camera

Power your camera back on and resume normal use

In order to verify that the firmware update was successful, go to the firmware option under the setup (wrench icon) menu tab, and confirm that the indicated firmware version matches that of the update.

Read more at: https://www.pentaxforums.com/articles/firmware-updates/pentax-k-3-ii-firmware-v1...#ixzz6igDImb1j

Sure does, well shot and worth the little more waiting time.

Just a thought, as the lens works fine in AF, ensure your putting the camera into manual focus as well as the lens, there's a switch by the lens mount

If its been dropped or knocked this could poss be the cause, not much use could also be an explaination, does it work ok with autofocus ?

Have you tried working the manual focus range for a while to see if it eases the issue, could you be just working against the autofocus drive ?

I've got either a 1st or 2nd gen Elinchrome transmitter and they work on both the K1 and 645 so I see no reason why they wouldn't work on a K3 particularly as they work on your K5