Absolutely agree with you Peter
It's just the pain factor!
Like you, I have no intention buying from anywhere else - Chris and colleagues have always been informative, helpful, and well informed.

Chris - I might ring you about the K10D
Thanks!
Matt

Ouch!
That hurts seeing that K20D refurb price having just bought one new only a little while ago And still not sold the K10D to help fund it...
Dang!
Matt

When I used MF lenses on the K10D & *ist-D I got mixed results too. I was, however, relying on the autofocus system to tell me when the shot was in focus.

I pinned it down to the fact that I was pressing the shutter when the red LED lit to show the focus point. The correct focus indicator is, and only is, the GREEN Hexagon in the viewfinder

That helped a lot, but even then I ended up using only autofocus lenses because my eyesight isn't that great!

Additionally, I got hold of the O-ME53 magnifying eyepiece - and that makes the view a bit larger (about 1.20x) which may well help in manual focus situations.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Haven't got one... it's not an ND grad, just an ND. Can't remember the number but think it was P (or could be Z-Pro).
Think it was on either Speedgraphic or Cokin's site.

Number is 156, available in "P" size - www.cokin.fr
Matt

There is a new 8-stop Cokin (it's nearly black!), IIRC.

However, although the amount of light changes through the day - and you can compensate with grads - the quality of light changes as well. And that cannot be created with grads (or anything else).

Some of the best landscape shots I've seen have been taken by photographers who sit and wait patiently for the light to be just right - with, or without an ND grad. To illustrate, check out AndyTVcams and Keith Henson on ePhotozine (They're also very helpful in providing advice).

Matt

Normally when SDHC compatibility is specified this means up to the maximum capacity of the SDHC card specification. Really as large as you can get hold of...

I currently use 4Gb SDHC cards (especially in the K20D which produces huge files). Personally I wouldn't want anything much bigger - because if one card fails for any reason (or is stolen or misplaced) then that limits what is lost.

Additionally, the 4Gb Sandisk Extreme III cards are incredibly fast. Not many of the higher capacity SDHC cards have anywhere near the performance - Picstop (www.picstop.co.uk) list most of the card Read & Write speeds.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Lilly,
I don't think a dedicated graphics card is going to help that much with CS3 After all, there's no 3D rendered graphics, no fast moving stuff etc. Everything's contained in the PC's memory for CS3, not the video card's.

There aren't many laptops that are "drop proof" - check carefully how rugged they are. Some are very fragile. Years ago the Toshiba's were the only laptops that could survive the drop off a desk (minor dents and broken plastic apart). I've had a Toshiba Tablet PC that's been hammered and is still going strong (though the LCD isn't that hot compared to more modern ones).

I've had a few Dell laptops pass through the office - they've all seemed very good value, and generally well built. You'll probably get direct support for the Dells in India too

It's worth noting that Dell change their deals every Thursday - and it's best to try out both the Home and Small Business sections as they target different markets. Often the Small Business section will have some truly excellent deals.

Main thing - get a decent amount of RAM (2Gb would be great, 1Gb at a minimum).

If you haven't already got a Huey/Spyder etc, then that's another worthy addition (perhaps not while travelling, but certainly if you want any form of colour accuracy for editing).

Don's advice is also worth noting

Hope that helps!
Matt

Yes and no.

I did a friend's wedding with the K20D and D-Range in RAW.
However, I did completely blow out one shot (came outside from inside with the Metz and neglected to adjust settings). Silkypix managed to bring back a surprising amount of detail... but it was still blown. So, I turned it B&W in SP and did the best I could. What was very interesting was that the resulting shot (which I was apologising profusely for) - everyone loved!

I've not done any scientific tests, but even without D-Range the K20D has an astonishing amount of detail and a pretty wide dynamic range in the first place! When looking at the RAW detail I have found it difficult to discern the difference between D-Range on and off... which leads to another question...

When a RAW is taken with D-Range on, are the individual pixels adjusted, or is a region, or is nothing much changed and extra information stored in the EXIF for handling at a later stage. There's not been too much technical detail on it all...

Matt

Chris,
The Vuescan software is available here: http://www.hamrick.com/
It's been a looong time since I did scanning
Vuescan has auto-insertion detection for slides - so that worked a treat. For negs, with the Coolscan IV you had to fiddle about with a neg carrier, and Vuescan could detect when you inserted that too. However, since the registration wasn't always 100% (as it would be with a slide) I found it best to manually set up the first frame and let Vuescan do the rest - there are options.

As far as OD, to be honest I found that Vuescan gave a terrific scan from the old Minolta Scan Dual I had (especially compared to the Minolta software :roll. There wasn't a great deal of difference in scanning slides with the Coolscan IV - higher res, yes, but not a huge difference. I'm not sure whether higher OD is more relevant to neg or slides...
The plus side of VS is that you could do a kind of HDR - it'd do multiple passes with different exposures (if the scanner allowed) and provide a wider range. Used that a couple of times (but obviously longer scanning time).

If you've been using digital for a while it'll be a shock going back to film - I have some scans from Fuji 1600ASA negs that I go back to every now and again to remind me just how awful the quality was in comparison to the current dSLR crop!

Hope that helps!
Matt

LOL! I wasn't that bad
Matt