A really good late afternoon / early evening visit last month to the Garden and Woods at Coombe near Croydon yielded a great variety of subjects and lighting. Here is a selection from the outing, all taken with the Pentax K7, mostly on a tripod. Lenses as described for each photo ....


1) Samyang 14mm F2.8






2) Samyang 14mm F2.8






3) Tamron Adaptall 135mm F2.8 / 13 + 21mm Ex Tubes






4) Tamron Adaptall 135mm F2.8 / 13 + 21mm Ex Tubes






5) Samyang 14mm F2.8






6) D FA 28-105mm






7) Tamron AF 70-300 Di LD






8} Samyang 14mm F2.8




I hope you enjoyed this exploration !

..... a perfect backdrop for a summer portrait session !

We spent a few nights in a caravan deep in rural Shropshire (it was a 20min haul to Shrewsbury's Asda ), and the open space, landscape, bright sunshine, plus daughters in uncommonly good mood, all came together for some portraits.

Taken with the K7, D FA28-105, Cactus V6II Trigger / RF60x Flash in softbox .....



































So I thoroughly recommend a caravan in a field in Shropshire for your next photoshoot . Thanks for looking, Nigel

There's a few different terms in use, do it can be confusing ......I like the clarity and distinction between the terms "built-in flash" and "accessory flash", so that's the ones that I promote the use of.

With ISO performance that the KP is renowned for, I'd have thought that the flash is still very useful. Indoors and in low light shooting at ISO 800-3200 will allow a good amount of ambient to record, and for fill purposes at those ISOs flash will be plenty powerful enough.

Think of it this way .... My K7 with it's 13GN flash would be far less useful in those situations.

I use Nero Burning Rom software for DVD/Bluray backups .... This has verification built in and can check the integrity of all the copied files.

For my USB drives I recommend a small utility program from Microsoft, SyncToy .... This allows incremental backups using an 'echo' principle, where each backup creates an echo of all the changes made to the original (ie your computer Pictures folder) .... This saves time by only backing up the changes. But it still verifies the entire backup and confirms that everything is in order.

I would avoid confusion and use a catalogue programme only for workflow purposes oh the computer ..... So I'd say don't bother trying to backup with PSE. As you are already worried about, you will end up not knowing what is an actual image file as opposed to a thumbnail remnant from some file move you carried out long ago .....

If you have all you images in a single main folder, eg the default Pictures folder within your login folder in Windows, then a simple right -click drag copy operation will do it and make your backup onto a USB drive. I'd use an 'Algi-type" labelling system to keep the drives district and always know which one is the latest.

We all seem to highly value the Weather Resistant feature of our gear, (at least it is very often cited as desirable on this and other Pentax forums), but I suspect the reality is that for most photographic situations we really would rather never have to rely on it ..... we would much prefer it if we needed 'Sun Resistance' !

Very precise compositions Philip, and you have produced a sense of depth within the spaces, I presume through use of a smallish aperture. Good sharp results, considering you weren't using a tripod.

For when you're photographing nudes in the winter ...?

Sharp and a great layout of elements .....yes, it looks like you have carefully arranged the surrounds for the bird!