I use that technique often. a couple years back I posted some vampire pics (I use it for video as well) where you set your white balance off white paper, but shoot through a gel to get the WB reading, and then place that gel over your light source. now you're whole scene is the opposite color (color wheel chart) of your gel and only objects lit with your gelled lightsource will come out normal looking...

this is perfect for shooting "day for night" shots... I made everything lit by ambient light dark blue, and my subjects normal with an orange gel to create my vampire scenes with one light source.

on my mac, I use a program called Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact copy of my internal harddrive onto an external drive. I do this the day I buy the computer. then I put the drive away and never use it unless I want to take out my working drive and replace it with a "factory original, never used " drive for any reason.

this is on top of regular backups. worth the money.... you have no idea how handy that can be especially when re-selling or repairing a computer...

it's not just Pentax having issues with stocking retail stores only to have retailers getting bit by online sellers:
link

somewhere in the forums was some debates about wether using straps causes more mishaps than they prevent... I've never used them myself... hopefully you'll be getting to upgrade to the 17-70

anybody ever wonder what happens if Penatx copies OLY and brings a full blown retro styled camera to the market, and then the style changes and everybody is like "not another retro" "If we wanted grampa's camera, we'd ask grampa for his"?

nothing worse than showing up in last years fashion statement.... and fashions change... I'd rather be ahead of the curve than behind it..

k10 in studio, kr for candids and video, k10 for outdoorsy stuff...

Oly got it right?
I bet a lot of OLY products sold in recent years had an unnecessary surcharge added to the price to cover some ceo's gambling debts to the Yakuza.... but hey.... they got some neato retro stylin happin'n.... lol!

anyways...

let's see how the k30 SELLS before we go writing off the company...
I hope to see some clever marketing for the k-01 and product placement in the near future.. It really is a fine camera... I just can't help but like it.. a few little omissions prevented me from buying one this year... but no sense crying over spilt milk, I can get another year out of my sony camcorders... maybe the next model will address the omission of live view hdmi out and focus peaking while recording video... or the addition of a touch screen or articulated lcd... who knows.. maybe even 4k video....

an affordable one is made by polaris.
I own one and have put many years on it.
I have tested it side by side with Sekonik's costing three times as much and it is accurate to within a tenth of a stop.
I use mine primarily for flash indoors and out, but if low light ambient is your main intent the Polaris does not perform as well as Sekonic in very low light.

and yes I use mine a lot.

true.. but if you happen to be camping, spelunking, night shooting, or raving, then a glow in the dark camera might come in handy...lol!

if Pentax wanted to really please the young'uns, they'd paint the new k30's with that paint that changes colours by temperature.... or even a glow in the dark version...