For walkabouts I increasingly tend to go out with one prime on the camera and one or two in my pockets. Majority of what I have are manual focus.

K-7 usually set to ISO200 with highlight protection switched on.

I almost always shoot RAW (but have the USER setting set to best JPEG in natural tone with a bit of tweaking to sharpness and saturation).

If I am using SMC-A lenses (or anything newer), then I tend to use Av most of the time, with evaluative metering. Take a shot and the adjust the exposure if necessary (often not required with the K-7).

If using AF, I use centre point and half press of the shutter.

Need my beauty sleep too, but don't get it...explains quite a lot!

Little bump to make sure that others look at their diaries....

Jon

As the man said - done (already), with donation to a very worthy cause. Thanks for looking, Jon

To make space for the huge National Geographic Bag that I bought from Richard Day a while ago, I need to clear half the house

I have two Crumpler Bags, which I guess says it all - I liked the first one so much that I bought another. This is actually the newer and slightly larger of the two - a "Pretty Boy XXL" - and in great shape. They seem almost indestructable, and it looks almost as new.

It's available to anyone who is prepared to make a donation to the charity of their choice, of at least £10 plus the postage fee.

I've shown the bag with a K100DS (plus kit lens), but have managed to fit in a K20D fitted with grip and Sigma 17-70 plus a couple of small primes. It is easily big enough to fit a normal two lens kit (eg Kx plus 18-55 and 55-300) plus flash, and the front flap has plenty of space for spare memory, batteries, etc.

Other great thing - it's really well made but weighs very little, so easy to carry. PM me if you are interested.

Cheers,

Jon

It's been a while since I met some fellow Pentaxians at a great evening that Steve Jacob (aka *isteve on DPR and other forums) organised - and we thought it was about time that we did another one.

So, the suggestion is that we meet somewhere around the South Bank on Friday 19th March after work (suggest around 6:30pm, possibly 7 if people are coming from further afield?), for a bit of a wander, a spot of photography, a pint or three, and some pleasant chat amoungst friends to set up the weekend.

Hope you can join us? Give us a clue about whether you can by replying to this thread, and once we know whether the date works well for people, we'll confirm the arrangements.

Chees,

Jon

(1) I agree with Richard about 18-200 (or 18-250) being commercially sensible. But I'd make it WR too.

(2) WR 55-300, preferably with faster focussing

(3) Either a Pentax badged version of the rumoured update to the Tokina 80-400, or something else that covers the 100-400 range, preferably in a similarly compact form

(4) A fast 28mm DA Ltd - to give us "standard" field of view on APS-C

Mike - I was wondering when I was going to see some pictures by this lens, not of the lens!

As the previous owner, I'd back up what Mike says: decent build quality apart from the hood and cap (and I even included a centre pinch cap in the deal too....). Image quality is actually very good indeed, with quite neutral colours and surprising sharpness even wide open. At f1.4 it is rumoured to at least equal or even outperform much more expensive lenses - and the bokeh is exceptionally smooth.

MF is great - properly weighted and smooth focusing ring - but takes practice on dSLR because the viewfinder tends to give you the impression that you have more depth of field than you really have - wide open, things with any f1.4 MF lens can be a little hit or miss until you've got used to things. Live view can be very helpful here.

For portrait use it's an ideal length for 35mm, but perhaps the field of view is a little narrow on crop sensor SLRs - sort of the equivalent of taking 35mm portraits with a 135 lens. That said, get the focus right and make the most of that creamy bokeh, and the potential for great portraits is definitely there.

I kept a reconditioned K100DS which is now used by my 11 year old and 13 year old (it's an easy camera for them to use - in the case of one of them just point and shoot, and in the case of the other learn to go a little further). Means I can also borrow it on occasion when I want to do some IR photography as it's much better at that than the newer bodies.

Would you be interested in a Crumpler bag?

I have two and was thinking of offloading one of them. In excellent condition. They are well made but very light weight with a comfortable shoulder strap.

Should be big enough to hold your camera with lens fitted, and at least one additional lens (up to size of 55-300) or flash, plus there is a velcro front pouch that can hold spare battery, memory cards, and a few odds and ends. Comes with a couple of movable velcro-ed dividers.

I'm at work currently but almost sure that they were called "Ben's Pizza" if you want to Google and take a look.

I would be happy to send it as a freebie if you were prepared to make donation to a charity of your choice that would at least cover cost of postage plus say another tenner on top.

PM if you're interested, otherwise this thread may stray a bit too far off topic and into the classifieds!

Cheers,

Jon

I have a Kenko MC7 which I think is quite good, but in reality I suspect there is little difference between using it on a high resolution camera and cropping the images taken without.

It may be more useful on 6 or 10MP cameras, but cropping with the newer bodies may be able to outperform the TC.

In addition, given the 55-300 is not exactly the fastest to focus at longer lengths, I wonder whether a TC might make it slower than many people would like to live with.