One was sold on Ebay last month for £9.99. I suspect that's your best bet.

G

Ring Pentax and ask.

If you're in the UK, this is the number:

01753 792731

G

It's all about light.

Ideally you need two powerful studio flashes with brollies or softboxes and a smaller one to do duty as a hairlight or whatever.

However, a simple but powerful manual flashgun used with a reflector can do wonders. Just make sure you mount it OFF the camera and diffuse the light in some way. Manual exposure is usually best in the studio.

Don't even think about Halogen. You'll need about 2KW minimum, and that means a lot of heat.

A digital camera is better than film because you have instant feedback on how your pictures are turning out.

Good luck.

Yes, definitely, and a lot more.

G

Kodak have stopped making their full-frame camera, I believe, as have Contax, and Nikon's biggest sensor is APS (at 12MP). The only remaining FF camera is Canon, and it's incredibly expensive.

I agree that for a wide-angle user, the APS format means investing in another lens or two.

As for the magnification argument, I take your point, but to get the same effect means I would have to download a massive 22MB file and crop it. The quality would be better from FF, but the quality I get at the moment is quite good enough for my purposes. I don't think the increase in quality justifies the massive increase in price.

There's an interesting discussion about this here:

http://www.photo.net/oped/bobatkins/full_frame.html

Those who are seriously concerned about APS sensor quality would, I presume, presently be using MF rather than 35mm film cameras.

G

Nobody outside Pentax knows what Pentax's plans are for a full-frame digital in K-mount, but my own view is that it is not going to come any time soon, if ever. People who say otherwise are optimists.

Pentax ARE bringing out a camera this year (?) with a larger chip, but it will be a digital version of the 645.

Pentax K lenses cannot be used on existing 24x36 DSLRs from other makers without expensive modification and loss of features.

The quality obtainable from the APS-C chips is for most purposes comparable to 35mm film, and often better. Landscape photographers can use software stitching to achieve results similar to a view camera.

Because of economies of scale and technical difficulties , a full-frame sensor is always going to be massively expensive compared to APS. There is also the matter of storage to consider. Those big images will be slow to process and eat up a lot of hard disk space.

Personally, I'm delighted with the present offerings, and am in no hurry for a 24x36 sensor. With such a beast, my expensive 300mm would lose a third of it's magnification.

George

As JR says, get a card reader. Then upload just the image you want from the card reader. MUCH easier than playing around with folders, even if it's possible.

I had a look in the manual and saw nothing about being able to set up different folders. Perhaps the camera creates separate folders for movies and stills.

G

Just use a smaller card. Trying to use a camera as a file server is bizarre.

What makes you think this is possible? How will the camera know what folder to use? Why not upload everything? Leaving stuff on the card lowers its capacity for recording new images

You seem to be creating problems for yourself for no reason.

G

Thanks for that, Matt. I know I should get into RAW, but the practicalities have been putting me off.

I've just bought my first 2GB memory card. Now I need a USB2 card reader and I'll be ready.

And Capture 1, of course. Thank goodness for Mr Bush destroying the value of the dollar.

G