The "A" lenses were the manual focus "automatic aperture" lenses from Pentax. You can pick up 50mm A lenses (f1.2, f1.4, f1.7) pretty cheaply. Has the "A" setting on the aperture ring (next to the f22 setting etc).

The "M" lenses are manual focus, manual aperture. Not really appropriate to your uses.

The "F" and "FA" lenses are autofocus. The "FA" are the newer type. The "F" series are often very good, or identical optically, to the FA, but being older they're often cheaper. I have the SMC-F 50mm/f1.7 - razor sharp and very cheap

The "FAJ" lenses are autofocus but with no aperture ring so they won't work with older manual Pentax cameras.

The "DA" are the newest digital series.

Designation is usually something like Pentax SMC-FA 50mm/f1.7, or SMC Pentax DA 16-45 etc. Should usually appear in the name somewhere.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Ah!
Here's the DIY link I remembered:
http://www.pinholephotography.org/35mm%20A4.htm

But the Lenox Laser stuff looks interesting - a 260um hole...

Matt

Here's some links:
http://www.camerahacker.com/EOS_Pin-Hole_Lens/
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/Canon_1ds_pinhole.html

(Laser cut holes: http://kennethhunt.com/archives/001298.html & http://www.lenoxlaser.com/downloadcatalogs/Photography_Catalog.pdf )

Still applicable to Pentax
Matt

Mac,
This is something I've always wanted to do. Here's one suggestion I read (recounted from memory):

Cut out a piece of drinks can, push a ballpoint pen into it to make a dent.
Use wet-and-dry on the "hill" side of the dent and sand down to make very thin.
Use a needle to make a pin-hole in the now very fine piece of aluminium.
Glue/tape this over a larger hole in a body cap.

Have seen some interesting results, even with a DSLR. But I've only got one decent body cap, and haven't (yet) got hold of another!

Matt

Jimmy,
Of the Pentax guns, only the AF360FGZ is wireless capable. (Though the new AF540FGZ will almost certainly be. Available mid October they say.)

As far as I know, of the third-party flashes, only the Sigma EF 500 DG Super (not the ST) has wireless.

For the *ist-D, you just need the popup flash for wireless. You can, like the *ist-Ds use a second AF360 as a master controller too. That way you can do contrast controlled flash with two devices. With the pop-up flash you have little control - the custom menu allows you to specify whether the popup is used as just a controller, or whether it fires along with the slave (but you have no exposure control for the popup).

Hope that helps!
Matt

Perhaps in terms of "paper specs", but definitely not in terms of useability. Here's my list of items that I couldn't live without on the *ist-D, pretty much in priority order:

* Wireless flash using the popup flash
* AF button on rear with ability to not focus on half press of shutter
* Viewfinder bar graph metering for manual exposure
* Vertical grip
* Thumb and finger wheels for Av and Tv

And I believe there are more custom options on the *ist-D - and I do actually use them all! So... not in denial, but hoping that the next model will cover these things too

If I had a choice of an *ist-DS/DL and an as-new *ist-D - I'd go with the *ist-D again, even if it cost more

As far as image quality is concerned, though, they're all on a par (when it comes to RAW), and, as you say, the *ist-DS/DL are probably better out-of-camera when it comes to JPG.

Matt

The other tip I saw regarding aligning panos in PS was this:

When the colour doesn't match, do the adjustments channel-by-channel. i.e. Press Ctrl-1 to select the red channel and use Levels/Curves to blend, then press Ctrl-2 to select the green etc. This is a much faster way of matching differing exposures... apparently

(Think it might have been in one of Katrin Eismann's excellent books, or could have been Russell Brown's... I'll check it out )

For me, I shoot RAW and just apply the same settings to all the images Gives quite a bit of lattitude on exposure too.

Matt

I had a set of Pentax extension tubes, but manual stop-down metering was a bit of a pain. So I ebayed them
Got hold of a cheap set of second hand "Teleplus" extension tubes which have the electrical contacts. This allows auto matrix metering, and all the other modes. Focus is manual, but that's no problem for macro work.
I also have the Pentax 1.7xAF adaptor, and have used this with the extension tubes for some seriously close macro work!
Matt

Ok, here's the settings, as far as I can remember (haven't the chance to try it out).

* Page 49 of the AF360 manual. Set to "SLAVE2" (dumb mode)
* For use, switch the power to the mid point, and the slave mode to "S"
* Put the AF360 in "A" mode (using the mode button)

Now, the AF360 should trigger twice, once for each flash of the popup on the *ist-Ds. In theory all should work fine (actually I used this with a Canon S30 for quite some time).

The only thing to watch out for is the flash distance of the AF360. If the preflash uses all the juice of the AF360 you'll get nothing for the main flash of the popup and the picture will be massively underexposed. Just so you know

Matt

The *ist-Ds cannot operate the AF360 in true wireless mode from the popup flash
The AF360 can, however, work in "regular" dumb slave mode - and this is what you've probably got set.
I'll look out the exact settings for you...