The moon basically requires a normal earthly daylight exposure. It shouldn't need a neutral density filter if exposed with the correct shutter speed. With a fixed aperture lens/telescope, set the shutter speed using the M setting and If it's too bright decrease the shutter speed until it isn't any more. There'll be no ideal exposure as it will depend on atmospheric haze and other factors.
Using auto exposure it will be balancing out all the darkness of the night sky leading to that over exposure.
Also worth trying might be to use the spot metering setting to get the exposure in AV mode, lock the exposure and then recompose the picture to taste!
If you get the image slightly under exposed using raw, it should be possible to correct the exposure in post processing, eg in Photoshop, Lightroom etc. Recovering a burned out image isn't usually successful.
Also, are you using a sensible ISO and not letting the camera auto selecting something daft?

Royal Mail are pretty clear the the max thickness for the letter rate is 5mm, Anything thicker requires it to be a 'large letter.' If in any doubt, take it to the PO and if they accept it as letter rate all should be well.
In the case of viewfinder caps it might make sense to sellotape them to a piece of card to save the inevitable.
The sender might consider himself fortunate that the RM haven't sent him the bill to get the letter franking machine repaired having bits of Pentax floating round inside it!

I get the feeling you didn't understand my earlier posts in this thread. Worrying about which version you have on the camera here is really a non issue. If however you're worrying about potential issues there shouldn't be any if you follow the instructions, particularly ensuring the battery is fully charged beforehand.

But it is! I've previously linked to the page where it shows it and I'll repeat the link for you:
http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/support/digital/k-5_s.html
It clearly includes v1.01 so can only presume you looked at the K-5ii/K-5iis page which is for a different camera. Why not just go ahead and update it if you want the latest firmware?

If you don't feel able take it to a local camera shop but they'll probably make a charge to provide the service for something you can fairly easily do yourself.

Surely JPS are not appropriate for a Canadian resident? And posting to the UK for just a firmware update would be ridiculous.

If the OP isn't confident to do the update I feel sure any decent local camera shop would help out.

The K-5 update page is http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/support/digital/k-5_s.html and mentions v1.01 so not sure what the problem is.

If older versions were required to update to a current version then they too would be available to download as well.

I think you're looking at the K-5 firmware update page. You don't want that, you want this:
http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/support/digital/k-5_2_s.html

I don't think you could easily install K-5 firmware on a K-5iis, but if you force it it might not bode well! However double check which camera you have before installing the appropriate update for it as there isn't a K-5s. It'll be either a K-5, K5ii or K-5iis.

You have to remember that digital camera sensors aren't Kodachrome 64 so record the image in a different way. I understand Kodachrome films have a dynamic range of around 12 stops. That is matched or bettered with recent digital camera sensors when shooting raw but with jpegs it is somewhat worse. Using the camera's HDR function to produce jpegs can certainly help boost that range but is less flexible than doing it in a dedicated image processing program.
The in-camera HDR needs to take three separate exposures to create an HDR image, however HDR from a raw file only requires one (though more can be utilized.)

Some truly fab shots there, well done and thanks for sharing. Seems you got the astrotracer to work in the end OK!

Thanks for updating us, Pleased you had a quick response. I expect it is possible but you'd have to understand the data connections and how to interpret them and then develop an app. It might even require a bespoke camera firmware. Guess pretty time consuming and then may not work! I can certainly understand why it hasn't been achieved as Android was still in its infancy so developers wouldn't have even considered it. At least you know you might get some success tethering to a PC even if not a mobile or why not try a newer camera known to allow tethering to mobile?

It's this
https://www.amazon.com/Pentax-K10D-JumpStart-Guides-Tutorial/dp/B000KZK03C
and maybe available here:
https://www.ephotozine.com/article/pentax-jumpstart-guides-now-stocked-in-ephoto...