I would try using only one battery in the body, then the other, to see if you have a faulty battery problem.

I've found rocket blowers to cause more problems than improvements and now only use it to blow dust from the front/rear of lenses and dusting my slides/negatives off before scanning them.

More often than not, the rocket blower moves the dust, usually to an even less accessible place like behind the focus screen or onto the prism, rather than remove it.

My preferred solution for the elimination of dust bunnies is the Arctic Butterfly from Visible Dust. I've never had to wet clean my K20D or K5 yet.

I've photographed this building before but thought I'd shoot it again, this time thinking in Monochrome.



K51_3829-Edit.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_3830.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_3832.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_3835.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_3836.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_3842.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_3845.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr

I haven't done any monochrome work for years. C & C welcome.

I forgot to add that you'll probably need a flash meter as well to get correct exposures. Have a look at the Sekonic range. I use the L-358.

Not a very big one, admittedly, but a gap nevertheless.

I'm no studio flash expert, but I've gone through the same decision process recently.

I opted for:-

2 x Konig light stands , about £12.00 each.
2 x Kaavie 40" Umbrellas, about £23 each.
3 x Flash/Umbrella bracket, about £14 each.

To these, I attach my 2 x AF540FGZ flashes as my main lights and 1 x AF500FTZ flash for the background. I trigger them with Seculine TwinLink radio triggers.

I opted for the Seculine radio products because Pocket Wizards are way out of my price range, but you might consider Cactus 5 triggers as a cheaper option. They are well regarded but were not available when I went through this exercise.

If you choose to use umbrellas, go large, 40" minimum. You'll soon discover that the smaller umbrellas supplied as standard with some kits don't have a wide enough spread.

As for flashes, you don't need top of the range, all singing all dancing kit, but they will need to be reasonably powerful. AF500FTZ's can be had quite cheaply nowadays, but other flashes having GN's of 50+ are also available at reasonable prices.

Happy hunting.

My lenses don't cover the 8-12mm range, but I settled on DA 12-24mm, DA* 16-50mm, DA* 60-250mm, and Sigma 150-500mm.

You'll notice that I have a gap between 50 & 60mm for which I use a DA* 50-135mm and/or DA* 55mm if/when I need to, which is rarely.

Covering the range of focal lengths is not the only criteria to consider though. You'll need to decide whether the maximum aperture of f4 for the DA* 60-250mm is likely to be a limitation for you. A lens having a max aperture of f2.8 would better suit the needs of low light photography.

Happy hunting.

Thanks. http://www.pentax.jp/english/index.html

Interesting, but why doesn't the light reflected in the water of 4, match the sky?

I'm sure there's probably a very complicated reason for it.

Much better, but you've used a slightly too close crop, you've clipped the top of the flower.

Don't you think that your 2nd shot has much more impact?

The flowers are more open now too.