Surely if the clouds were burnt out they could not appear detailed on any monitor, since no monitor can display information which isn't present?

They look fine from here too, although I too am on a work monitor so can't vouch for its setup.

No, it just wants the focal length (90mm). Unfortunately Pentax have never made a 90mm lens so you have to pick 85 or 100, I find 100 works nicely with my example of the same lens.

The focal length of the lens is a physical property of that lens and is not changed by the format of the camera. The whole 1.5x crop factor thing is only there to help people who are used to 35mm film cameras know what field of view to expect, I recommend that you ignore it and just get used to how lenses perform on the camera in your hands.

sorry, I should probably have included something else in that post other than the link, a smiley would probably have been a start

I think that XKCD is broadly on your side anyway, ie Mythbusters aren't going to get published in a peer reviewed journal but they make people think and question the world rather than blindly believing things, therefore they are "a good thing" (tm)

TBH I'm much more inclined to listen to the myriad Pentax and Canon users who snap up M42 Taks at every opportunity than a few Sony users who've been sold a story by Sony designed to make them buy crazy expensive new glass rather than perfectly servicable M42 and Minolta bayonet mount stuff second hand.

I can't remember if CRV-3 batteries will fit in the K-m or not. If they do (they do in my older *istDL2), then the answer is it's possible, but not advised.

The reason is that the native voltage of a Li-Ion cell is 3.7V. Two of these in the form of rechargeable CRV-3s would make a total supply voltage of 7.4V instead of the 6V the camera is designed for.

Some, but not all, rechargeable CRV3s are regulated to 3V and these are fine, but the cheaper ones are often plain Li-Ion cells kicking out 3.7V and these are not fine.

Pentax recommend against it so if you fry your camera by using them it wont be covered, and the labeling is not always clear so you could easily waste a lot of time and money trying to find suitable cells. Personally, I wouldn't risk it. Stick to either rechargeable Ni-MH AAs or single use Lithiums, both of which are fine and will give good battery life in a K-m

at risk of inviting the same response a man may get when answering the question "does this dress make me look fat?" with the phraise "no dear, your fat makes you look fat", I contend that no lens, no camera feature, and no computer can ever make you lazy.

They may make it easier for you to BE lazy, but only your own free will can MAKE you lazy.

I have not used the FA100-300, but by reputation it is not quite as good as the FA80-320, which I have.

My Dad has the DA 55-300, and it is far more usable at the long end than the 80-320. I try to keep the FA below 250mm and stopped down to f/8, but the DA can be used at any focal length even wide open.

Don't get me wrong, it's not prime sharp at 300mm wide open, but it's respectable and as such I'd say it's a worthy upgrade for the kind of things your talking about.

Just to clarify, "they" certainly do use X-rays, the difference in PPE is because the radiographers are using an open beam system designed to irradiate humans, where the baggage scanner is fully enclosed with heavy shielding.

I use an X-ray generator at work which would do far more damage to me than any medical or security imaging scanner, but it's enclosed in a shielded and interlocked cabinet so I don't need "lead apron" style precautions.

as far as freebes go, 3 leap to mind

UFRAW - A little basic, but has a good batch mode, integrates well into GIMP and if you like long exposures it can do dark frame subtraction to save you some time in the field (useful for astro photography).

RawTherapee - Much more polished feel than UFRAW, excellent batch queue system although it's also pretty fast so unless you're running on a Netbook you'll probably never have to use it. My converter of choice.

FastStone Image Viewer More of a viewer with editing capabilities. Nevertheless, handy for "convert the whole darned lot to JPG" type batch jobs, and makes a very nice viewer for slideshows and the like


UFRAW and RawTherapee are both available for both Windows and Linux, FastStone is Windows native but runs well under Wine.

If you don't mind paying for quality software, Lightroom 3 and Silkypix are both highly regarded. I find RawTherapee is more than capable for what I need, but you may prefer the guaranteed stability and relative future-proofness of paid software.