Carrie,

Your camera has what is commonly referred to as the 'crippled' K mount. This simply means that your camera can only use lenses that have the electrical contacts to transmit data between camera body and lens.

If you fit a reversing adapter to your camera body, then mount a lens on the end, the electrical contacts have no effect therefore rendering it as a non-useable lens on your camera.

For your reference, any of the Pentax MZ cameras who's model name ends with 0 (zero) has the same 'crippled' mount. The ist film camera also has this mount.

To be able to use manual lenses, including reversed lenses or lenses mounted on extension tubes that don't have the electrical contacts, you'll need a MZ range camera who's model name does not end in 0.

MZ-7's and 5's crop up quite regularly on ebay at reasonable prices.

No no, I'm sure you'll find some very nice people there . . . just misinformed that's all. I mean, they actually think that they have the best camera systems on the planet . . . but we know different.

There you go, it was easy really wasn't it?

Mind you, there was never much doubt in my mind that you would ever have been disuaded from buying it by anybody on this forum. So if you really want to be talked out of buying top flight Pentax kit in the future, can I suggest you find a Canon or Nikon forum.

You will enjoy the LX, I'm sure. Well done.

You only need two things.

1: Enough disposable income that it doesn't matter whether you buy it or not. You will be pleased with it.
2: An understanding partner, possibly the most important asset.
3: I lied about only needing 2 things, third thing is a good price.

Cheers, enjoy the LX.

Liam,

I mostly use RawShooterPro (RSP) to adjust exposure and colour temperature (when I get it wrong). RSP gives you + & - 3 stops exposure latitude.

I think I'm right in saying that the human hand (which most of us carry about is not quite a neutral (18% grey) colour and that some compensation is necessary. Trouble is, I can't remember which way . . . I'm sure somebody else does.

What perhaps you ought to do is to compare a reading from your hand to tone from fresh green grass, say, or better still, a proper 18% grey card to be spot on.

Lastly, why haven't you got a hand held light meter yet?

Finally & lastly why didn't you trust your cameras reading?

Welcome to the forum. You've chosen wisely, the MZ-6 is a superb camera.

You'll need the AF360FGZ to make use of these functions. The RTF flash and the 360FGZ 'talk' to each other, not with infrared, but with a sequence of high speed flashes.

Master mode means that the RTF is used as both a light source for the exposure and as a controller for the AF360FGZ. In controller mode the RTF only controls the external flashgun(s) and does not provide light for the exposure. This means that the RTF does fire in both modes and as such will fire most other external flashgun prematurely becasue the controlling light pulses emitted by the RTF occur before the shutter is triggered to make the exposure.

If you are lucky enough to own 2 or more AF360FGZ's then you can put one on-camera and use it as a master to control one or more AF360FGZ's wirelessly.

You can still use the AF500FTZ as a slave flash, triggered by the firing of the RTF (Retractable TTL Flash) flash. In this case you probably have to turn off the wireless features on the camera.

If you really have any doubt whatsoever, for anything but exceptionally specialised requirements where film is a must, digital will prevail. It is likely that, even the specialist requirements will have to be satisfied with digital images in the not too distant future. Film is not dead . . . yet . . . but it will be . . . . digital technology conquers all . . . eventually. What most people seem to misunderstand is that digital technology is in its infancy and is continually evolving at a mind boggling rapid rate. When was the last time any really innovative change occured in film manufacture ? ? ? In 10 or 20 years time, digital technology will be so advanced that even the new 10MP Pentax DSLR will look soooooo outdated and there will be so little demand for film that, to produce it, will not be cost efficient.

I can't really think that there is any hard-wired circuitry involved. The hardware in most cameras is the same generically. Ignoting the CCD or CMOS sensor, there is a piece of wizard electronics that converts an image to bits 'n bytes, these are then passed to software/firmware for further processing if necessary. It's this software/firmware that makes the difference and I personally think that Pentax could provide a DNG converter retrospectively in an upgrade to all of its DSLR range (*istD first please Mr Pentax). Trouble is, will it take longer for the camera to process?

Matt,

Apologies if I over-simplified the process. I have made a couple more tests using Fuji .RAF files from my F810 and have tried outputting to uncompressed DNG files. I've also tried converting from Mosaic to linear. Still no joy with RawShooter.

In your previous post, do I understand correctly that you think that perhaps Pixmantec haven't stuck to the DNG rules ?

My .RAF files open fine in Photoshop as DNG where PS first opens the CameraRaw plugin to facilitate RAW corrections.

I note from following the provided link that there is a trial version of C1 available. I think I might give it a go.

John,

I think that in the fairly near future RAW format must be standardised, as are JPG, TIFF et al.

If that doesn't happen, upgrading cameras in the future is going to be a very expensive process if we are forced to upgrade our software as well.

I'm not suggesting that one particular manufacturer (Adobe) should have the responsibility of producing and 'policing' the 'standard', just that it needs to be done, and soon.

Maybe Adobe's DNG is the way forward, if it is, then in-camera conversion to that format is a must.

I have tried one more test. I have a Fuji F810 P&S camera which produces RAW files. I ran some of its files through Adobes DNG converter and then tried opening the resulting files with RawShooter. No joy. Photoshop opens them fine because the CameraRAW 2.4 plug-in supports that camera, RawShooter doesn't.

My contention is that Adobe's DNG converter is not actually a standalone converter at all, more a compression system that still relies on the underlying RAW converter beneath it. If it were, RawShooter ought to be able to open the files.

Shooting high quality JPG is probably good enough for many situations but RAW is so much more forgiving. Colour temperature and exposure adjustments are a breeze using RAW. I think most of us have at one time or another shot a sequence using the wrong WB setting, I know I certainly have.