Very good job Nigel. It doesn't look anywhere near as dramatic as the other renderings but it does looks very convincing, I think you are probably right that this is more how it originally looked.

The advice to use a bit larger aperture is probably good, that said if you are getting much worse results at f14 with this lens than you did with your old Pentax *at the same aperture* then it isn't the f14 bit that is the problem as diffraction isn't lens specific.

As suggested I would try some test shots using live view focusing and a range of apertures to see how the lens performs and eliminate focus tuning problems. If only live view focussed shots are sharp you know you need to fine tune the standard focusing for this lens.

If you can't get a sharp image even with live view focusing (and your tequnique allows you to get get sharp images with other long lenses) then tha's the time to suspect a bad lens.

Good luck,
Rob.

I'm not sure we can blame the tools in this case

If the metering is being confused by the water reflections that means you will get darker images and less problems with blown highlights on the swans. Granted an incident meter isn't going to be confused by the reflections but then you are going to get a normal exposure and the swan will be even more blown out.

The real problem is the dynamic range of the image and the inadvertent but accidentally correct underexposure caused by the water reflections isn't sufficient to put the swan fully within the available DR. What is needed is a tad more deliberate underexposure to keep all that detail in the white feathers. Swan's aren't easy to photograph

Sorry but I eventually gave up on getting a swap and ordered a flat one last week, which arrived yesterday. Shockingly bad timing ...

For what it's worth I found the cheapest way of getting an adapter was to buy a CC hand grip off amazon/ebay which includes the adapter but was cheaper than an adapter on its own.

I'm going to dissent a bit here. Current high ISO sensor performance (at least on my K30) is already vastly better than it was in the past, vastly better than in film days, and I almost never find it necessary to use flash because of low light levels. And I'm pretty sure it will improve further for three reasons. Firstly sensors will improve further in technology and at least some of that improvement will be used for ISO improvement as well as increased pixel density. Secondly image processing algorythms for noise reduction will improve further - for bayer sensor de-mosaicing colour information from neighbouring pixels is inferred and I'm not convinced that tequnique is currently fully exploited for noise reduction. Thirdly we are seeing the introduction of multiple exposures for 'super resolution' and the promise of electronic shutters to allow potentially faster multiple frame rates, and those multiple exposures could just as well be used for noise reduction as for resolution enhancement.

For 'studio' type use where flash is used to produce multiple creative light sources that is a different matter yet even here is flash likely to persist? Flash really isn't desirable for this use either, it is just a more economical and cooler alternative to using modelling lights and more compact and convenient than using mirror and reflectors. Yet with better high ISO performance we could use smaller more compact mirrors and reflectors, or substitute modern high output LED sources for the flash and be able to properly see the lighting effects rather than guess how the flash will render it. So even for this purpose I imagine flash will become less important and prevalent.

If only the world worked that way

That said this utility is probably as good as anything else. Probably better than anything you'll find implemented in a camera but if you are going to only use a card in a single camera body I do still think you are best off formatting in that same device you are going to use it in.

If it was something I'd taken myself, it would go into the reject pile without even getting printed.

But we all like different things, fortunately I never seem to particularly like things that attract big price stickers.

I suspect it'll be shaking no more than if you were just using normal existing image stabilisation at 8 fps.

At 8 fps you'll just get 2 compound images per second though instead of eight. If we make the assumption that Pentax actually provide a raw image file with the four raws images inside it it should be possible to write a bit of softeare to extract those component images out this getting get the original 8 fps back but without the supposed benefit of the super resolution stuff. If Pentax don't do that but instead do in-camera processing to generate a single 'enhanced' raw you'll definitely have to make you mind up on what you want at capture time. As we will if Pentax do the (poor) job they did on HDR and only offer us a jpeg output.

Personally I hope Pentax's design decision was for in-camera processing to a single raw image, if the camera 'cpu' has enough grunt for it of course.

Yes I think the problems are endemic to any budget long/slow zoom. I think the primary problem is that at 300mm the lens aperture is on the limit for AF and hence AF response is slow, which is why I recommend using single point AF, it does also greatly help if you have bright sunny conditions and a contrasty subject. The secondary problem is that the lens has a long and slow mechanical travel so that once it starts winding in and out you are lost hence my recommendation to start out focused just beyond the anticipated focus distance (the camera electronics first start trying to achieve focus in this direction, if you start initially focused too close rather than too distant the camera continues to wind in and you never achieve focus).

In the end I weakened and snapped up a Siggy 100-300 f4 that came up. This is as expected night and day for BIF compared to the budget lenses, it is mechanically faster of course but I think the real reason it is so much better is simply that it is f4 and at that aperture the AF sensors work vastly faster which in turn makes multipoint focus viable. Even the focus tracking on my K30 works properly

For everything else except BIF I like the 55-300. Its IQ is good enough that I can carry it instead of the SIggy and save a lot of weight.

The Pentax 55-300 is a nice lens with an exceptionally useful focal length range at an absolute bargain price which I thoroughly recommend.

but

If you are really interested in birds in flight this is not the lens for you but really neither is anything else that is cheap either. It is possible to get some decent BIF shots with this lens, but many/most are missed and it is an exercise in frustration.

Using this lens for BIF AF I recommend you do everything you can to make the camera more responsive i.e. take off any lens filters, preset exposure manually, go down to single AF point and prefocus to somewhere that is somewhat beyond your target focus point but ideally not too far off focus and make absolutely sure you don't press the focus button without the target being properly centered in the viewfinder. That way you may get one or two nice frames before the lens goes off on a wild hunt while you have a cup of tea or two. If you are *really* good at holding the bird firmly on the focus point you can probably do better than me but you have to be good - at the small maximum aperture the lens offers AF is too unresponsive to use with multiple points and once you ask for AF with the focus point off target the lens travel is so slow you are lost.