Agreed. Hoya was from the outset, honest about their interest in Pentax Medical division and they basically boosted the camera division enough to increase it's resale value.

Now Pentax is owned by a company that wants to make cameras......

Time will tell... I hope Pentax makes a return to it's former glory days of sales, market share and brand recognition.

exactly what he needs to do, if he doesn't want to spend three grand on lighting.
if he has to skip the brollie and shoot with hard light, he can always soften parts in post.

Elinchrom quadra/ranger are an expensive option... but here's the big question..
WTH are you doing? need more info.

When shooting with flash, you ALWAYS have two light sources ambient and flash.
First you choose which will be your MAIN light and which will be your FILL light...

USUALLY I decide to use a flash for main on my subject, and get the light as close to my subject as possible, then use the ambient as fill. often this technique involves setting up a tripod. Your tripod is like having thousands of watt seconds of lighting units for HUGE areas.... you set that exposure (I often under expose it slightly) FIRST for your ambient, then set your FLASH for your subject.

So I'd say use the tripod to get a base exposure, then add some flash to light your subjects.

I've shot portraits at iso 800, f8, 1/8 sec with a brollie mounted af 360 fgz with power to spare....

if your name is Ricoh, and you just bought Pentax, and you're selling under the Pentax brand.... you put out a simple advisory and offer a low-cost mod program to fix the old Ricoh lenses. as far as I can remember... the easy fix involved taking a pair of needle nosed pliers, grasping the Ricoh lock pin, and pulling real hard......

EDIT: that plierspull advicewas for a cheap knock-off.... the right wat for Ricoh lenses was to pull the lensmount off with a phillips screwdriver, remove pin and reassemble the lens....easier done than it sounds.

it was one of those "Good Idea, Bad Idea" scenarios..... keep your batteries charged=Good Idea. Leaving your camera sitting out in the sun= Bad Idea....

Now sticking solar panels and a 12 volt battery onto an electrically cooled beer cooler.... better idea, more cooling power when you need it!

I have owned one ricoh camera. I had a kr wayy back when... it was a solid, nicely spec'd camera. I had owned it as an upgrade to my first k1000, and as a back up to my mz5. Ricoh also had some very impressive p&s cameras over the years, of which, a few were very advanced for thier time. never had the northamerican market share to compete though, and ricoh got out of the slr market and chased the p&s market which we all know is being killed by competition from cell phones. now they wand back in. makes sense for them. will hope ricoh can make Pentax branded cameras that innovate, and expand....

the lens mount on the camera must be damaged in some way... no way were any of my pentax cameras like that. Although I did have a sigma with a damaged lens mount (which I replaced) that was tight and hard to attach to the body....
I'm forced to wonder if maybe this sigma and body combination was dropped or banged in such a manor to cause this? If they have a matching dent, maybe they fit each other, but neither will fit another lens or camera... have you tried this sigma lens on a different pentax body? What about your pentax lenses? have you tried those on a different body?

the right to bear cameras needs to be a constitutional amendment to freedom of speech worded in such a way that no police force/officer would dare obstruct or interfere.
Citizens bearing cameras are a non violent method of crime prevention (see how Toronto Police caught g20 rioters using civilians footage to id vandals) and to protect citizens from police brutality/rights abuses (Rodney King).
In a world where freedom of speech is valued, photos and videos goes a long ways towards proving who said/did what.

forgive if my memory is not right, but is there not a locking pin on the camera mount that could be dirty or jammed?

the key of course is balance... if your beer mug is large enough, it should balance with the weight of your d-slr... which means level horizons... which would get further out of level as you drink your beer... ah, never mind....