Excellent candid shot. You ought to be very pleased with that.

As far as I am aware, Pentax .PEF, or any RAW camera, files are essentially read only. You can't modify them. Neither Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW or Picasa or Capture One makes any changes to the original file. All of the changes made by these programmes are stored in extra files so that they can be recalled later.

If you have Photoshop CS, you can upgrade to CS4 for around £170.00

I can't imagine that the performance of the Winder ME II will be affected very much by using NiMh batteries.

If you don't use it often, I'd suggest using Sanyo's Eneloop batteries as they have a very low self discharge rate and are said to maintain up to 80% capacity even when not used for a year. The same cannot be said for most NiMh batteries.

I find that after only a few weeks, Uniross batteries can lose their charge.

The power switch on the grip has no influence over the battery. I routinely use my camera with a battery only in the grip, not the body. My grip power switch is always off, until I need it.

Essentially you need:
1: Pentax Remote Assistant III (PRA3). This software was supplied with your camera, or it can be downloaded.
2: A RAW converter programme like Adobe Lightroom that can sit there looking at a 'watched folder' for any images arriving.

Start Adobe Lightroom (or whatever).

Set-up PRA3 to save its images in Lightroom's (or whatever) 'watched' folder, and snap way.

This procedure works OK with PRA3 and Lightroom 2, it was less successful with earlier versions of PRA.

What can you mean . . . daft EU laws?

Are you not worried about lead poisoning should you accidentally swallow a 645 or 67 camera body?

I've no experience of this Dan, but this might be what you're after.

I'm not familiar with the K100D but if it has SR then camera shake will not be too much of a problem with handheld shots (with SR turned on) or tripod mounted (with SR turned off).

I like lots of light for my macro shots and so I use 2 x AF240FT flashes + Stofen diffusers to light my subjects whenever possible. These will be replaced by 2 x AF540FGZ's as soon as I receive the second one which I've bought from a forum member.

Lots of light = faster shutter speeds and/or smaller aperture to maximise depth of field when necessary. Shallow DOF also has its creative uses too.

My lenses of choice are SMC Pentax-FA 100mm 1:2.8 Macro and Sigma EX DG 180mm 1:3.5 Macro. I also have a SMC Pentax-FA 50mm Macro which I haven't used yet. Reason, I like to photograph spiders and I'm not yet familiar with the dangerous ones where I now live so for health 'n safety reasons, I use longer Macro lenses to maximise the distance between me and my subject.

EDIT: To minimise the possibility of camera shake, use a tripod, SR off, mirror lock up, and a cable/remote release, and lots of light.

There are a few other 'don't need to be sticky' topics Matt. None of yours though .

Apologies in order then . I just located the trial download page and didn't take it any further.

I've downloaded the non-extended version upgrade which I ordered a week or so ago. So far it looks very good.

The interface has changed somewhat. Most of the new adjustments to be found in Lightroom 2 are now built in to Camera RAW and it's much faster to load than older versions.

For anybody with CS, CS2, or CS3, you can upgrade to CS4 (standard edition) for under £170.00. I upgraded from CS2 with no installation issues other than it's 800Mb install file taking a while to download, then extract, then install.

I haven't installed any of my Plugins yet to see if they work.