Whatever you do, don't let them keep the machine. The data on it is almost certainly recoverable.

Let them keep it and they'll stick a £20 mobo in it and flog it as reconditioned.

Read chapter 8 of the manual "Processing images with digital filters".

HDR option is one of the filters.

The Arctic Butterfly from Visible Dust shifts just about everything on sensor/mirror/focussing screen (different brushes for each) except chewing gum. For that I use a Karcher pressure washer . . . but not on my camera.

Wide lens designs generally fall into one of two categories, curvilinear (fisheye perspective) or rectilinear (normal perspective).

The Pentax 10-17mm is curvilinear, hence it's name, fisheye. The Pentax 12-24mm and Sigma 10-20mm are of rectilinear design.

Essentially this means that if you were to take a photo of a square building from a point exactly centre to the building, the building would look square in the image and have straight sides. The same image taken with a fisheye lens would produce a barrel shaped building.

That said, there is usually some barrel distortion in rectilinear design lenses causing straight lines to appear curved, especially at the extreme edges of the image. The Sigma 10-20mm is said to have some barrel distortion, the Pentax dA 12-24mm, less so.

These two lenses are about the widest you can go at the moment for reasonable money.

The "S" of HSBC at extreme left looks sharper to me. Not good.

Correct, but you've surely had to clone out your left foot?

EDIT: Sorry, I hadn't noticed that it's a different shot.

I think that looks very good. Only you can say whether the colours are right (it looks a little on the pinky/mauve side around the middle of the shot, behind the pedestrian. I'm guessing that the wheeled stand behind and left of her should be white, it appears to have a mauve colour cast.

Otherwise the contrast looks a lot better and some more of the shadow detail has come to life.

Well done, I'm glad you enjoyed the exercise.

I'm amazed. Why does anybody want/need the same lenses in different livery? Want, I can inderstand, kind of. But need?

That's not a problem for me, we don't have any long grass here in southern Spain.

It's even bigger now I've fitted the extensions.

I think they look much better than the originals. What do you think yourself. There is certainly more detail in the shadows of all of these.

You could experiment even more. I've had good results making up to 9 separate images (-4 to + 4 stops, 1 stop apart) and either blending them, or using the HDR option.

Give it a go if you have the time. I think even moredetail can be rescued, but don't overdo it.