There are two types of distortion to think about with wide lenses.

One is an optical fault and that is the inability of a lens to record straight lines as straight lines, especially at the edges. It's usually a result of trying to design a lens for compactness and/or low cost.

The other is the apparent perspective distortion. When you get very close to subjects, as you well might with ultra-wide lenses, the edges and corners will show circles as elongated, so a footbal will look like an American football. This is normal and actiually correct so ther's nothing to be done about it.

I've just received the SMC Pentax-DA 10-17mm which at the wide end exhibits masses of this type of distortion, or at least if it doesn't I'll want a refund!

Used creatively, the "defects" can be turned to advantage.

At any price, the M8 should have been superb from the moment it was released, but especially at Leica prices.

I would have tried a slow exposure with the camera tripod mounted. Various effects of different shutter speeds could be tried.

Nothing wrong with the question as such, but it has been covered pretty well in various other threads already.

Personally, I avoid the use of flash if at all possible. Natural light every time. Studio flash is useful for portraits, but a single on-camera flash is not.

As for product shots, I think you need more than a flashgun. Natural light from a large window plus some reflectors would be much better.

But there are two Pentax flashguns available that will do the job if you really want a portable flash unit.

There were also network problems at Virgin that were affectting e-mails and Broadband.

I'm not having any login problems, is anyone else?

Try refreshing your browser or even deleting all your cookies and starting again. However, this will mean re-logging in to any sites you visit, so don't forget the passwords!

Sometimes I've had problems with particular sites and for one or two I use an alternative browser.

Mozilla Firefox 2 is a useful one to try as an alternative to Internet Explorer. There are others.

Welcome to the forum!

Glad to hear you are enjoying your K100D Super - it's a fine camera. In many ways I prefer its handling to the K10D.

I should have been more specific - I was referring to the manual focus models.

The Tamron 90mm f2.5 is a lens with a well deserved reputation, but the pre-digital ones at least are very bulky and very heavy. I feel the mechanical construction and finish are not quite up to Pentax levels. The results are undeniably very good.

A professional friend of mine who has used macro lenses extensively for the past 30 years or more has had many Tamron 90mm f2.5s. He wears them out. He probably has around 3 or 4 Tamrons in the time he still has the original Olympus lenses on the system he uses. The Tamrons are indeed good, and cost effective, but they don't stand up to the professional wear and tear to the same degree as marque lenses.