No, definitely not. The 35mm equivalent is the Shift Lens, but these have limited capability compared to a View Camera.

I'm not convinced about the shift theory in the image shown as this moves a narrow DOF into a different plane as required, but still leaves a narrow DOF within that plane. That is not the effect we have here.

Here we have good DOF throughout the image and that is best served by a very small aperture. The shutter speed could simply have been a long one, as simple as that.

It will depend on the shutter speed, but in any event if you use the 2 second delayed action to avoid shake then SR is switched off by the camera.

Also bear in mind that SR is less effective at close distances, so the best results will be obtained with SR off.

As this will vary with shutter speed and distance, it's probably better to believe the advice given by Pentax and switch SR off when using a tripod.

My Settings>Profile Information

The light is very red, so you could use the Tungsten setting in White Balance.

However, if you do filter out the effect of the lighting, you end up removing the very character of the light that makes a night shot attractive. It would be like "correcting" the light of a sunset to make it look like daylight. Is this what we want to do?

Personally, I would think around the positive side of it and alter the composition of a shot to include as much as possible of what I want to show and remove as much as possible of what I don't.

Just a thought!

Apart from whatever I offer on my website, which you can refer to with pleasure, I do Saturday morning two hour sessions at ADAPS in Atherton every few weeks. These are typically beginners' workshops on all sorts of subjects and are free of charge as part of the membership of ADAPS.

Me? High level of knowledge - I'm well aware there are fields I haven't covered and things I don't know.

I'm still learning!

The clue may be in the lens you are using. If you are using an aperture ring instead of the "A" setting, then Av and manual is all you will get, regardless of what the mode dial is set on.

All of the above, except the twaddle bit.

The Takumar (bayonet) lenses are coated, but with conventional coatings as opposed to the SMC variety. All lenses are coated in some way or another, otherwise the contrast would be very low.

A lens hood is indeed the most useful accessory and the lens will be fine.

The 40mm has a very nice quality to the images. The lens is very small, but once fitted that has no real bearing on use.

It is nice to be able to use the Quick Shift, which is the one thing that makes me prefer it over the 43mm and 50mm lenses.