I've noticed that too and its always puzzled me. But then, simpler things than sophisticated cameras have that affect on me too . . .

My guess is they have too much Nikon stock and need to sell some. Pentax has neither been bought nor sold. Pentax are however in colaboration with Samsung on future developments. Samsung currently sells a camera (called something like GX-1) which is a rebadged *ist-DS.

Have a look at page 180 of the manual at http://www.pentaximaging.com/files/manual/istDL_web.pdf which confirms that any lens, which includes manual lenses having no A setting on the aperture ring can be used in metered manual mode. A custom menu setting needs to be changed to allow it, the same is true of other Pentax DSLR's. Use DOF preview and metering is turned on to set the correct exposure.

You can even use M42 screw mount lenses with the M42 - K mount adapter. If you buy one, make sure its a pukka Pentax one, or at least try before you buy. Some of the cheap third party adapters do not fit flush with the camera mount which causes the lens to fit slightly proud of the mount resulting in the loss of the ability to focus at infinity.

Interesting info.

Given the rod/cone count of the eye one can assume then that when we have digital sensors of 128MP or so, we will have something akin to the resolution of the human eye. I wonder how far we are away from that ?

I played cricket against an albino west indian chap many years ago. Blessed with the same facial features and tight wavy hair of a west indian except his skin was a very light pinkish brown colour, almost blonde hair, and blue eyes. I can testify that, at that time (30 years ago), there was nothing wrong with his sight as he was an exceptionally good bowler and batsman, and what a sense of humour. If any of you out there plays cricket and has never played against an all west indian side, you have no idea of what you are missing. Don't expect to hit the ball too much, you'll be too busy laughing. Great fun.

Anatomy of the eye (at least, the bits contributing to redeye in your pics).

The iris is what gives our eyes their colour. The pupil ( the black part in the centre of the iris) is the variable opening (aperture) that regulates the amount of light that enters the eye. The retina is the innermost coating at the back of the eye (much like the film in a camera) and contains light sensitive nerve endings which feed into the optic nerve and onto the brain for interpretation. The retina is kept enriched with blood, which leads me to . . .

Redeye in photo's is red light (blood coloured) reflected from the retina of a subjects eye, not the iris. The colour of the eyes has no influence over whether a subject produces more or less redeye, but the size of their pupil, or aperture, under any given lighting condition has a huge effect.

The built-in flash of any modern camera is generally much too close to the lens resulting in a very narrow reflectance path. A flash attached to a cameras hot shoe can also be too close to the lens as to produce redeye, depending on the flash/lens to subject distance. The further away the subject, the more likely you will get redeye'd pics.

To stand a better chance of eliminating redeye at its source, ie when the scene is captured on film or by digital sensor, you need to increase the reflectance angle by increasing the flash to lens distance either by hand holding the flash or at least have it mounted on a flash bracket or hot shoe grip.

The redeye reduction system of modern cameras, consisting of one or more short pre-flashes is designed to fool the subjects pupil into behaving as if more light is generally available thus closing it down briefly creating a smaller aperture.

If you are taking a group shot where their attention is on you and yourcamera, you could hold up a white card or something similar a few inches or so from the camera on the opposite side to the flashgun and tell your subjects to look at the object you are holding rather than directly into the lens. The resulting pic will still look as if they are looking at the camera but their eyes will have moved enough to reduce the possibility of redeye. This of course does not work for impromptu pics at darts matches.

Check out Pentax's offerings of ultra-wide lenses at http://kmp.bdimitrov.de/lenses/primes/ultra-wide/index.html

It turns our that I didn't buy one of those MO returned Huey's. It was apparantly sold 2 days ago and their website is not up to date.

Wiziwyg will have to do for now.

I wondered why my TFT Phospher wasn't listed

Sorry, I should have included a 'CRT only' reference in my previous post.

I bought one of those MO returned Huey's (thanks for the pointer) and it seems they have more if anybody is interested. £50 seems a reasonably good deal to me. I got an MO return (as new) Epson R800 for £170.00 too. I'm well happy as I've wanted (sorry, needed) one of those for ages.

I have had trouble with wiziwyg on my PC, it crashed as soon as I checked the monitor radio button, then hit next. Printer and scanner calibration seemed to work OK, at least as far as I would let it. Having messed about switching monitor profiles around from AdobeRGB to sRGB and a couple of reboots, it's working again.

You're right, squinting helps to get a much better result with Wiziwyg.

Users of Photoshop can use Adobe Gamma, to be found in Control Panel, for monitor calibration.

For me, Adobe Gamma produces a better result than WiZiWyG.

I now have everything set to use AdobeRGB, time to play . . .

Having set my *istD and PS CS2 to use AdobeRGB Colour Space, RawShooter reports that the monitor is using an sRGB profile. Does that matter, should it/can it be changed to AdobeRGB?

I took the most expensive option and bought a house in Spain. My wife spends most of her time out there for health reasons, I spend most of my time in UK. I'll have to come clean sooner or later though.