in case anyone is interested, I use a Philips one for all TV remote. It cost me £5 from Argos and works with my *istDL2 and K10D. Doesn't work with my MZ-7 though so it's not guaranteed.

I have a Sigma 28-200 (cheapo one) and a Zeiss branded 75-300 which I'm pretty sure is an early Sigma APO. Both work fine.

I've got a KR5 which tends to underexpose in low light by anything up to 2 stops, deppending on just how low the light is.

today I took 122 shots and the RAW PEF files total 1.22GB, so if I had been shooting RAW+ I imagine I could have taken a few more and stayed inside 2GB. It would have been more of a problem if I'd been shooting DNG files as those aren't compressed.

I have 2 1GB cards so I'm in a similar situation to you storage wise.

In typical Pentax fashion the frame counter underestimates their compression algorithm and says you only get 61 PEF's on a 1GB card. It's actually more like 100, or at least mid 90s.

Indeed, I'm holding out for them to put HSM into the Sigma Pentax mount lenses, I figure a lens that size could probably use it. Have you tried hand holding it with the SR on yet?

on the subject of RAW you could always use the RAW+ mode so you get both on small shoots where space is less of an issue. Sort of ease yourself in gently. Since I started using RAW I've never looked back, I really can't imagine how I coped without it now!

nice shot there Spider, it was nice to get the K10Ds out in some half decent lighting today wasnt it?

looks like your Bigma is performing nicely, I'm still tempted by one of those when my finances have recovered from the K10D (so about this time next year!)

I agree completely Tim, in my book the K10D is a very good performer in terms of high ISO noise. It certainly outperforms the Fuji Superia 1600 film I used to use for indoor sports before I went digital.

What noise there is seems to be nice and uniform and very easily removed. Remember as well that high ISO noise gets worse with exposure time, since this was a 1/8th exposure this is probably the worst noise you'll ever see in real life, any slower than that and you'll be using a tripod anyway so you can dump the ISO right down and use a looooong shutter speed.

the Neat Image free trial version is time unlimited and free for non comercial use. It's drawback is it can only save in one level of JPEG compression. The images it produces are generally fine, but not lossless.

If you buy the pay for version you get to change the JPEG compression level or save as TIFF if you want to, and it has batch mode.

the free trial is well worth a download and for web posting and small prints it does the job.

heres that same shot again after running through neat image




NI is very adjustible so if you want the grainy look for your BW conversions you can set it to just remove colour noise and ignore luminance noise. Here I had it set to remove about 60% of luminance noise and all colour noise, which is the default.

oh it works, just try 1/8th at 180mm without SR and see what happens, it just can't perform miracles is all

no problem, always happy to help where my geekyness comes in handy. If you look very closely on the "sensible" one you can just about start to see the colour banding that was obvious in the stupid one, but a little bit of Neat Image noise reduction clears that up in no time at all.

here is the same shot taken "sensibly" at ISO 1600, if ISO 1600 can ever be called sensible




its a bit shakey because even the K10s SR struggles a bit with 180mm and 1/8th shutter speed, that is about 5 stops better than should be possible after all!