Chris,
FWIW, there is a difference in the RAW buffering comparing PEF and DNG
(Or at least so I've read!)
Will try it later...
Matt

Chris,
Haven't done any scientific tests, but I bought a Lexar 2Gb 133x card for less than £50 from picstop.co.uk
It absolutely flies with the K10D
Matt

Yup

I took a body cap, drilled a hole a couple of mm in diameter in the centre, took some fine copper foil and made a fine pin hole in it then glued that over the hole.

It's not a Pentax first I'm afraid. There are plenty of resources about it on the 'net, and Katrin Eismann mentioned it in her excellent book "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching".

However, a couple of points of interest:
* Yes, it does work
* Shutter speeds tend to be achingly long
* Focus isn't that brilliant, even though DoF is huge. (One webpage mentioned that it was down to the fact you really need the pinhole closer to the sensor??)

Still, it's quite a laugh and gets some very odd results
Matt

Lilly,
No problem. "IF" is Internal Focussing. Should be quick as anything and absolutely wonderful on the K10D.
My SMC-F 100mm/f2.8 macro is unbelievable on the K10D!!
Matt

Rodger,
Hmmm. That's an interesting question in fisheye terms...

What actually happens is that you get a centre crop. Nothing happens to the actual focal length. When you use a rectilinear lens the crop reduces the angle of view so the lens has the same AoV for a lens 1.5x on a 35mm camera.

But that can't be applied to fisheye

I can dig out the equations and work it out... but I think the best thing is just to try it

The very nice fisheye alternative for digital is the SMC-DA 10-17mm

Matt

But an 18mm fisheye will still give far wider angle of view than the 18-55mm kit lens
Matt

Correction accepted Yes - "A" series lenses work a dream.

Serves me right for typing too much
Matt

I assume you mean the SMC-F 17-28mm fisheye, the SMC-FA 28-200mm, the SMC-FA 80-320 - all these lenses are perfectly ok on digital.
You will get all functions: autofocus, auto-aperture etc.

I use SMC-F and SMC-FA lenses that were designed for film and can say they are absolutely sublime on digital - e.g. the SMC-F 50mm/f1.4 is one of the best lenses I've ever seen, anywhere.

I think some of the issues you mention occur with other makes of lenses, like Sigma, Tokina etc. Sigma is perhaps the worst since they reverse engineer the body-lens protocol. Part of that protocol is the lens ID code which indicates the particular model - and the third party lenses often get misrepresented as different Pentax lenses. The *ist-D was built to focus on the hyperfocal distance automatically, and I suspect some of the issues are down to that. Additionally, if the light is not collimated correctly it can often work well on film, but digital is a little less forgiving (because it has the bayer filter in front of the CCD).

That said, I think you will be very pleasantly surprised at the quality you can achieve with Pentax own lenses and their DSLRs - especially the K10D

You didn't say which 135/f2.8 you have - if you have the "A" or "M" versions then there are some "limitations". The M lenses don't do evaluative metering, only centre-weighted and spot. Both types require stop-down metering too since the DSLR bodies lack the mechanical "finger" that senses where the aperture is set to. However, if you've been using the thumb/finger wheels of the Z1 then the likelihood is that all the lenses will be just perfect

Hope that helps!
Matt

When you can get the very well reported Elinchrom DLite 2 kit for around £430 it's not surprising they've disappeared.
Matt

Daniel understood what I meant - the firmware for the K10D was in massive development just before launch and I reckon the marketing literature predated that firmware by a long way
Matt