one step at a time, there's only one lens which is known to lack the screw drive, I think it's a little early to say they are dropping it. In a converter the only thing that would be required for the screw would be a simple drive shaft, leaving it out would seem to be virging on pointless.

Including it in lenses costs money and development time because they have to figure out how to put the drive and gears in without interfearing with the SDM system. Including it in a teleconverter is just a case of providing the drive shaft, it's not in the same league at all.

Don't forget you are talking about an R&D department who are so obsessed with the idea of backward compatibility that they make their DA lenses, whos aperture cannot be manually changed and whose image circle is inadiquate for film use, nevertheless meter correctly on a K1000.

only way I can see of doing that is to make a carbon copy of the 1.7xAF converter and put SDM motors in it. Not that this is impossible or anything, but such a unit is of limited use with the SDM lenses. I think I would rather see a converter with pass through power contacts and the necessary electronics to tell the camera that the focal length has changed.

the major market for a converter has got to be as a partner for the fast lenses, which are mostly SDM natively, so why re-invent the wheel?

turn about is fair play, thanks for the licensing info. I havn't yet decided if Silky is enough of an improvement over UFRAW to be worth the money, though I do really like the workflow.

well, considering that the Eee is borderline on the minimum specs, it runs pretty well. You can't see all the controls is the only thing, because the screen is too small. Silky is designed for 1024x768 and Eee only has 800x480

does anyone know what the license conditions are on Silky? ie if I wanted to run it on my main lappy and my Eee would I technically need two licenses? I can't find any reference to it on the website.

I haven't tried it on my Eee, and in any case I'm now running Puppeee linux on it rather than the standard Xandros distro, but on my Ubuntu powered main laptop it couldn't be simpler. Heres how it works:

Just install the latest version of WINE (stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator).

Download the silkypix installer, right click on it and select "open with > Wine Windows Emulator" (I bet that menu item has the guys at WineHQ annoyed)

The installer should run as normal, WINE creates a sub directory under your Home directory which it then presents to running applications as "C:".

On Ubuntu you get a submenu under the main menu called "Wine", with a "programs" section underneath so you can run your installed programs easily.

It seems WINE has come a long way in recent years, so far I've got 3 of the 4 programs I've tried to install under it working and the one which didn't work was the notoriously Linux Hostile AutoCAD 2006.

The only thing in Silky which doesn't work quite properly is maximising the window, although you can resize it by grabbing the corner and pulling so it's not too much of a problem. It even presents /home/username on your Linux filesystem as "My-Documents" to the windows programs so you can find whatever you need to work on.

This weekend I updated to the latest version of WINE and Silkypix works better than ever! I went for a walk this afternoon with our local wildlife trust and processed all the photos I took though Silky under Linux. The program is a joy to use, and seems to be very happy to work under WINE in Ubuntu 7.10

I'm seriously considering buying a full licence.

I haven't had a real chance to play yet, the conversion seems to be correct and speed is comparable to UFRAW if not a bit faster. Not sure if it's as quick as it would be in Windoze because I am MS free, but my experience in the past has been that programs which run at all under WINE run as near as makes no odds at full speed.

It seems to have some issues with the filesystem, presumably because it isn't layed out as the program expects. Hopefully will have a chance to play properly over the weekend and then report back.

I've just downloaded the freebe version of Silkypix and it installs and runs happily under Wine on Ubuntu 7.10 (the default WINE from the repositories, not sure of the version).

So far all I've done is install it and process one photo on mostly automatic, but it seems very happy. Will play more and report back.

they only command high prices because:

1: they are the only Pentax converter which supports AF at all

2: they are scarce on the used market, most people who have one don't want to sell it.

They are not particularly attractive to people who want to use them with AF lenses because of the way they work. For this reason, in the modern climate where most people's primary arsenal is AF lenses, a simple pass through converter will sell better.

The presence of a DA pass through converter on the market will turn the 1.7x AF into what it should be, a curiosity valued by collectors and the odd person who has an old A* prime or two. The 1.7x converters price will drop, and everyone will be happy.

I agree George, the 1.7x AF converter was an artifact of the MF/AF changeover period and wouldn't be as popular now. An SDM pass through converter would be a much better idea.

There are reports that some converters with PZ passthroughs already work with SDM, which is handy. I think the REALLY important feature of a Pentax converter is not that it be SDM compatible, but that it be SR compatible.