The standard Eneloop charger has served me very well for 5 or 6 years, I'm still using the original cells I bought when I had my first K-x, there is no loss of performance with the batteries. That's good enough evidence for me! During the same period of time I've tried 4 or 5 other chargers, none of which have charged the Eneloops as well as the Sanyo one. I'm sure you could spend a lot of money on a smart charger, but I prefer to give advice based on my own experience, which is that the Eneloop one works perfectly well.

Regards
David

Hi Joats

I don't understand what you have to lose? As it is now the camera is useless to you anyway, unless you pay a lot of money to have it repaired, so why not give the firmware update a go with the Alkaline batteries? Otherwise it will sit on a shelf and you won't take any pictures with it?

Regards
David

I think these are some of the best shots you've posted Nigel, I really like them. They are different from your usual style and very refreshing.

No. 4 in particular is great, very imaginative use of composition, perspective and flash! I also like the aperture choices you've made, they effectively focus attention on the subjects.

Regards
David

I think we should 'get real' with this discussion, the shots posted by Nigel are snapshots, not professional portraits and as such are shot with whatever is available 'on the hoof' so to say. I have no problem with using fill-in flash, but I do think the fill on Nigel's shots is too harsh and too much, personally I think the flash should have been turned down lower if this was possible at the time. I still prefer the one without flash........

Cheers
David

Hi Joats

You need the correct Sanyo Eneloop Battery Charger, just go onto ebay UK and type 'Sanyo Eneloop Charger' into the search and several will come up at around the £10 price point. I have found with Eneloops that 'fast chargers' don't work so well, the Sanyo one is slow but charges the Eneloops more effectively.

Having set your camera to the 'Auto Detect' setting for batteries, is it now behaving correctly with the Eneloops? Also, if it is working fully correct with Duracell Alkalines there is no reason why you cannot carry out the latest available firmware update with the Alkaline batteries as it will not take long to complete. If you do this, please make sure you update only to the latest version that's compatible with your firmware version, even if this means doing several firmware updates in stages.

I have owned four K-x's (still have two) and none have experienced the battery issue, so maybe I've been lucky. Also, I would not recommend the later black Eneloop batteries as they do not work as well in the K-x as the white ones do. The black ones are great for flashguns though.

Please PM me if you need any advice or assistance, I can probably help you.

Regards
David

I have to agree, these are great. Normally I don't like black backgrounds on macro shots, but in this instance it works very well.

Regards
David

You may think I'm a naysayer for saying this Nigel, but I have to agree with redbusa99 in that the first image is by far the most natural and therefore to me the most successful shot in this group. The others don't look 'right' to me.

There are ways of extracting good shadow details from images without making them look odd and I think in this particular instance that would be a more successful approach.

I do agree with you however that it's great to have the pop-up flash available when it's needed.

Regards
David

My Sigma 17-70 can also be a bit soft at the edges, but it's a great all-round lens and is my most used one. I think to some extent you have to accept some compromises on lenses that have 'real world' prices.

Regards
David

Some really great shots in here, hard to pick a favourite!

Regards
David

I agree 100% with Jonathan-Mac's observations in the post above and this is precisely my train of thought when using my camera in tight spaces. I find the opportunity for using an ultra-wide or even just a normal wide angle in these situations is pretty limited and when it is used the result is often distorted.

For me it's a telephoto all the way when in towns / cities.

Regards
David