Editing image files over a network connection, even a gigabit connection, is paaaaaaiiiiiinfully slow. My advice, keep live work in progress images on the PC or a USB attached HDD, and backup to the NASbox.

Good job, well done. It looks like your floodlighting is a lot brighter than I have to work with though.

I'll try to remember to take some shots next Sunday of the lights used at the track I go to.

"Pretty reliable" may not be reliable enough, it needs to be totally reliable, and two backups are better than one, or none.

K100 ???? Did you mean K1000 ?

I do, but not that one. I use a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with 3 x 1Tb HDD's giving me 1.7Tb of storage.

I've purposely limited it to 1.7Tb because I consider backups to be very important. I have 2 x 2Tb Western Digital MyBook Essential drives attached to it for backup, which runs every 4 hours 24x7 with a 2 hour overlap. Worst case, I lose 2 hours work.

The first thing you will have to think about is how you are going to back it up.

NAS boxes are not immune to total loss of data. It's happened to me.

I had a failed drive (one of three) which I removed and sent it back for replacement under warranty. The NAS box continued quite happily with one failed drive. The replacement was sent to my son in UK and I collected it on one of my infrequent trips. Before departing for UK I turned off all my gear including the NAS box.

On my return, the NAS box would not boot. I eventually discovered that another drive had failed. It was working fine when I left, dead when I got back. Without a backup I would have lost 40 years worth of photo's.

RAID arrays, which is what a NAS box is, can suffer one failed drive, but not two (I use XRAID).

Now you just have to ask yourself one question, "Do I feel lucky?".

Lightroom 4 is so cheap nowadays, if you are serious about your photography you'll be shooting RAW, and a decent RAW processing package is as important as your choice of camera and lenses.

Yes it's a complicated piece of software and to get the best from it you need to spend some time to learn how to use it properly. But you'll get more help when you get stuck in Lightroom than you will when (not if) you get stuck with the Pentax supplied software.

Just buy it, you'll not regret it.

I use TAv mode when shooting the race meeting in daylight Steve, it works very well. In the dark, it's useless, ISO comes out way too high which produces very noisy images.

I'm limited to 1/180th by the flash, I haven't tried HSS yet, that might be better. I try to use a shutter speed around 1/200th anyway to get a bit of motion blur on the wheels, otherwise the cars look a bit too static.

I've had more success in Manual exposure mode and limiting my ISO to 800. With a few trial 'n error test shots, they come out pretty good I think.

The problem I'm having now is the flash taking too long to recharge in the colder weather we are having now. The races are only 5, 8, 10, or 15 laps in length and these cars really motor around the circa 400 meter track.

I should add that the shots above were with the camera on a monopod, but I still used OS mode 2 on the lens for image stability in the VF.

My biggest problem is still the problem of focusing in dimly lit conditions. I was hoping the Sigma f2.8 lens would solve that, but it hasn't entirely, hence my thoughts about the K5-II or the 's' variant as they are reported to be much better at focusing in low light.

Could be a slightly mucky contact on the grip's pins or camera's pads. Perhaps give them a bit of a clean with IPA on a cotton bud so you don't get caught out when you least expect it.

Glad you don't have to return it anyway.

Here's some taken at f2.8, 1/180th, ISO800 processed in Lightroom.

ND Grad added, darkest at bottom, to 'dumb' down the flash. A bit of sharpening and noise removal, cropped. That's about it.

I'm about 20-30 feet away from the cars and standing behind a tyre wall and steel barrier, and trying to carry out my marshal duties as well.

This first image has had a bit more work done on it to bring out the sky because it was almost dark when I took this. The racing team wants a copy of it too so I thought I'd better put some effort into it



K21_3494.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_8090.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_8093.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_8105.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr



K51_8106.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr

C&C welcome because I'm sure this lens is more proficient than I am. Only two race meetings left for this year though, we start again in Feb '13.

Thanks Matt. I'm wondering if there is a way to update Lightroom's lens ID database with our own lens descriptions. Anybody know if this is possible?