Hi David

Thanks for the information - most helpful. To answer you questions, I was holding the camera free hand, manual shooting and not using a tripod on this occasion. My long lenses are both Sigma DG's and are 70-300mm and 120-400mm OS.

One thing I have learned over the past few days is that I need to get to know my camera and equipment much better and go back to some basics! I started photography back in the early 80's, did my C&G at college and worked with all the good old B&W, negatives and colour film etc etc - even set up my own small dark room once!

I have to admit that whilst the digital photography era gives you almost instant results (gone are days when you eagerly awaiting for your prints to come back from the printers) I do feel its got rather more complicated with a lot more stuff to digest. Or is it just me getting older??

Thanks again to everyone for your support and advice.

Chris

Thank you to everyone who has got back to me - lots to think about - you guys are a great source of knowledge! Better than reading the mags! Thanks again. Chris

John

Not far from you in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs.

Guys

Thanks for the responses so far, the shake reduction mode was switched on when I was doing this. I've never got my head around this "Live View", can anyone explain to me please? I feel a round of golf coming on!! Thanks

Hoping this works - I forgot to mention I also used manual focus on some of the images.

Hi Andrew

I'll give it a go - I.T and me don't usually get on!

Hi everyone

I haven't been on the forum for a while as my photography has been pretty quiet. I'm sure this is an old topic, I've read up where I can but can't seem to get a definitive answer to my problem - blurry poor images using my 70-300mm Sigma lens on my K5!

As spring is with us we have quite a bit of activity in the garden with a pair of blue tits using a nesting box fixed to my shed - approx 10m from the conservatory (I'm not shooting through glass) I've been trying to get images of these new visitors setting up home with very mixed and often disappointing results.

My set up and settings - Pentax K5 with a Sigma 70-300 DG lens, ISO is 200 set manually, programme dial set to Av. As the weather has been reasonable I've been getting 125 & 250th at f5.6. I've been using the lens at 300mm.

The bottom line is that most, if not all of the images are blurry, they lack sharpness especially when I crop or try to enlarge. I'm shooting in JPEG @ 10 megapixels.

I've recently invested in a Sigma 120-400mm lens as I like to do the air shows. I've not used it much at all yet but what images I have taken are again blurry and lack sharpness at the extremes of the focal length.

I hope you guys out there can point me in the right direction or I might have to take up golf!!

Thanks
Chris

Good, glad you got it sorted. I've never done RIAT so might try it myself or is it Farnborough this year? I can never remember - do they alternate? I can recommend the Waddington air show as I've done that on several occasions. The City of Lincoln is of course very close and worth a stay - nice cathedral as well!

Good luck.

Chris

Hi David

I hope you have managed to sort the K3 update. It's not simple and as you know I had some issues with my K10D and my new K5. Not being IT savvy using words like "root directory" in the instructions doesn't' help one bit. Both of my cameras did show the current firmware when I turned on and pressed the menu button.

When I downloaded the files from the Pentax link I copied and pasted onto the SD card and under the folder called DCIM and not in it if that makes sense! Anyway many hair tugs later it worked and I seem to be up to date,

Good luck with retirement, I finished at 50 (very lucky) and now work part time but if I do nothing else this year I'm paying more attention to my photography. More air shows I think!

Regards
Chris

Hi guys
Many thanks for the advice - a couple on order!
Happy New Year!
Chris B