nice shots, I think I saw and photographed that same Yak above Hartfordshire a fortnight ago! A very similar one at least, I havn't got the shot here in Canada to check.

well I'm packed and ready to fly. It took some cursing and swearing and fiddling and begging of my sister to carry some lenses for me but my hand luggage is now less than 5KG. Lucky I'm a Pentax shooter! certain other makes would not have made things so "easy".

I'll see you all in 2 weeks with (hopefully) some pretty pictures of Vancuver Island to share. Take care all!

it didn't mention it on the site when I ordered mine either, which is why I decided to post this thread back then. I don't know for certain that the offer is still on, but it not being mentioned is not necessarily a bad sign.

BTW the K10D version is now out and works a treat. I put my copy on my Dad's machine since I don't use Windows anymore, and he loves it.

there was some mention a week or two ago about the Sandisk Extreme III CF cards coming with Capture One LE, and some confusion over whether or not the same was true of the SD cards.

Well I just took delivery of my Extreme III 1GB SD card from Picstop (whose prices just keep getting more and more insanely cheap!) and I can confirm that it did indeed come with an unlock code for Capture One LE.

Now if only they could get around to releasing an update to support K10D PEF files! (and preferably a Linux version as well)

true, I'd never thought of it that way!

Pete, let me try and explain again since it obviously wasn't clear to you last time (probably my fault).

here is what I would do (note I don't pretend this is the best way, but it seems to work for me)

you've got a subject, lets say a barn in a field with a bright sky.

select M mode and Spot metering.

Point the camera at the brightest thing you want detail in (probably the sky or some portion of it) and set aperture/shutter speed so the meter reads "correct" exposure.

Point the camera at the darkest thing, probably the barn. Note the difference in light meter reading. Change your aperture/shutter speed to halve the indicated error. This is now halfway in between your brightest and darkest regions and may even give you enough info to do as Manesty suggested. If it looks like the difference is too great for that and you need to use bracketing, continue.

Activate auto bracketing. This brings up little dots on the meter scale showing where the extra exposures will be. Adjust the bracketing so you get one shot near the highlight indicated exposure and one near the lowlight indicated exposure. You will also get one in the middle of course.

Now frame the shot and shoot. This is probably not the best way to meter, someone like JohnRiley or Matt can probably tell you a better way to do it since they understand the black art that is light metering much better than I, but do you see at least what I mean about metering first before you frame the shot?

I hope this helps

take the readings before you frame the shot, as I suggested.

When I'm taking a shot I rove around the important areas with the spot meter in M mode, watching the exposure readout.

Matt, on my K10D that button only controls bracketing. Is there a custom function somewhere which allows control of the other drive modes that way? that would be soooo useful.

It's not in the menus, on the 10D it has a button all of its very own

said button is on the top left hand side of the back of the body, and has a symbol showing three overlapping frames of different shades next to it.

To engage bracketing, hold that button and use the front dial to pick the number of frames (3 or 5) and the back dial to pick the exposure interval between them(0.5 to 2)

simple as that.

Conceptually yes you just take several shots and blend them in PS. In practice it can be quite hard to get this to look right, I've only pulled it off to my satisfaction a couple of times.

As far as the metering goes I'd probably use manual mode and spot metering, do the metering before I framed the shot and apply auto bracketing as seemed sensible from the meter readings. As you have realised you don't want to be moving the camera between shots.

George is right, although personally I'd go for a grad ND that's just because I generally don't like colour filter effects.

I'm not sure about the 1.4x, but I know the Bigma can only be used from something like 100-500 with the 2x APO