My 80-320 is a sharp one. I've used the Pentax 1.7x AF a couple of time (before selling on the 1.7x). It was definitely usable, but you did lose quite a chunk of contrast.

The sharpness was there (if you could keep the thing steady enough), but I ended up with a fair bit of PP to do due to the degraded contrast (a very "flat" looking image with a very bunched up histogram).

As I don't usually do very long telephoto (the 50-135 is normally enough for me), it wasn't something I would stick to doing

Matt

Some of the old posts are the best
Glad it helped again
Matt

Looks like a filter insert to me as well (hence the "Front" designation).

I understood the K7 does have WB AF correction... can't remember where I read it though
Matt

Stefan,
I'd be cautious - it's usually up to 480 Mbit/s

For example, I have a Freecom NAS drive that has a Gigabit Ethernet connector.... but the CPU in the NAS can only achieve a tiny percentage of that (not even maxing out 100-base-TX ) It almost might as well be 10-base-T

Last time I looked at a SD wireless card the actual transmission rate was dire

Matt

There's another thread about this...

Technical reasons appear to be:
* Canon uses transistor trigger
* Pentax uses thyristor trigger
* Flash unit takes more than 2mA to trigger - thus holding the Pentax's thyristor switched on.

Canon is not very well protected, but the Pentax is. The Calumet lights are 5V, but obviously are taking a little more current than they need (you could trigger on much less than 1mA - which would be fine with the thyristor).

I've toyed with the idea of making a little interface to do the job. You may find that a Wein Safe-Sync (IIRC) will also work.

Matt

AFAIK, the transfer rate is acceptable for JPEG, but a killer for RAW.
That puts me off it
Matt

It's your metering then - not the ISO per-se

Don't forget that an ISO400 shot that is 2 stops under exposed is actually ISO1600. So, if you had to push up the RAW conversion exposure - your 'pushing' the noise as well.

The more you pull stuff out of the shadows, the more noise you'll get - at any ISO. It's a bit like a radio transmission - if everything is transmitted loudly enough then you'll get a good clean signal. If you crank up the volume to listen to the quiet parts at the same volume then you are going to get more noise.

With night shots like this you should really work in "M" mode. On matrix metering the camera is going to see a LOT of black with some very brightly lit parts in the middle. It's almost certainly going to get this wrong! Use manual mode, and spot metering - meter on the part you want as mid-grey - then take the shot. You'll probably have to bracket or shoot & test to get it right.

Failing that, with such a wide range of highlight and shadow, you'll have to go the HDR route and fiddle about in software!

Hope that helps!
Matt

Easiest and quickest in Photoshop or Elements:

1) Add a new blank layer
2) Set the layer blend mode to "Colour"
3) Pick a soft brush
4) Alt-click on the building you don't mind the colour, and paint over the ones you do. Their colour will magically change

Failing that you'll have to mess around with cloning etc and spend a good hour or two getting it right. The above method should take about 5 minutes max

HTH!
Matt

It's at times like that you just want a Mac/MacPro with VirtualBox

Best of both worlds then!
Matt