What, £7 from a £200 sale. Lost me there!

He'll get his fees refunded if he does it correctly.

John

If he puts it through as a refund, he'll get his ebay and paypal fees back anyhow. Sounds like he is paying you the £200 as a fresh transfer and I expect Paypal have deducted their fee. He needs to put it through as a refund. You need to tell him how to do it and get him to do it again!

I had a large dealer do it the wrong way and that happened. I refunded him back and then he put the refund through for the original transaction. Somehow we got it sorted out eventually.

John

Is that what they call 'Buyer Protection?'

They should at least refund what they can now from his account and cough up themselves for the rest.

John

No, best not drop it really! You might find only the autofocus works!

How about: link ?

For future readers once the link is no more it's a 'Pentax SMC-M F4 Macro lens - K-Mount - Excellent'

John

The natural light... looks more natural!! Surprise surprise!

Lighting a room like that with a single flash is nigh on impossible.

Using flash to evenly light a whole room would be like trying to light a TV production set. Tricky to say the least! It would need several flash guns set to fire as slaves - some to light the background, some to light the tables and each would need to be at the right distance/setting to avoid exposure mismatches. It would be a pretty complicated set up. It could be done with the restaurant owners permission for a formal shoot but not something you'd do casually and you'd have to swot up on flash photography techniques to get it right.

You say your 18mm at f3.5 didn't work. Rather than use flash, try again upping the ISO a bit more and shoot in RAW. I'm sure you'll boost the resulting image enough if need be afterwards. On a K-5 you really can take photos of black cats in coal cellars and the K-r isn't far behind.

Turn the lights down at home and have a practice.

John

There must be some well proven techniques for doing that. Dropping it usually works but might not be reversible!

What you could do with is... DFA 100mm f2.8 macro. But many of the old manual macros were excellent lenses. Have had a Vivitar 90mm f2.8 manual focus from new. It's as good as the DFA.

John

I believe the whole idea of 'Catch in focus' is to allow users of Manual lenses some degree of automation.

Users of the DFA 100mm f2.8 macro lens can get CIF to work by turning the clamp to 'On.' I've got the older non WR version, I do not know if the newer WR version has that feature. Hope that helps someone!

John

Some of the clouds have come out pink in #2, the CS5 edit, so no contest, it has to be #1.

But they don't look like the same exposure, the angle is different?

John

If Pentax can use the same basic camera design to produce an enthusiasts version and a chic alternative without much extra (if any) R&D - just get a designer label for it instead - who's to say it doesn't make sense?
One basic design - two markets to appeal to.

Wasn't aware that Marc Newson was the designer of the new 40mm lens though! Personally I think he slipped up there, the camera needs something wider. Some of those photos show depth of field issues. Something between 24 to 30 would have made more sense (Fuji went even wider on their X100.)

John

Horticultural comment:
That looks rather like a Vine Weevil. If you have some pot plants in the kitchen, be careful - their grubs eat the roots and kill the plants. Check the compost for their grubs (they're like white maggots) and squash them and repot the plant. They really could devastate your potted plants.
http://www.gardenforumhorticulture.co.uk/pestwatch/vine-weevil.htm

Photographic comment:
Diffuse the flash or bounce it of a white card or studio umbrella. The latter could prove difficult if you only have the flash built into the camera though - you'd need a separate flash connected by a cable.
The image you've got is pretty good though - however I don't want to see any more for real!

John