This post is going to seem patronising, but reading the above either you are doing something wrong or there is a fault with your camera. I'm going to explain in words of one sylable so we can be absolutely sure you aren't doing anything wrong.

Place the camera on the table in front of you, switched off with the 18-55 kit lens attached.

Pick up the camera, and turn it on using the collar switch around the shutter button.

Press the Fn button, check that the camera is in single shot mode, indicated by a single green rectangle at the top of the screen. If it is not, press the up button on the 4 way control and select single shot mode (single green rectangle)

Set the main dial to M.

Roll the front and rear e-dials until you have selected 1/125th shutter speed and F8. For the moment we don't care what the picture looks like so it doesn't matter if this is completely under/over exposed.

Set the AF selector switch to M. This switch is found on the left hand side of the lens mount as you would normally hold the camera. The same position but on the opposite side from the lens release catch. Actually it's where YOU probably still think the lens release catch "should" be, since you're used to a Canon and they have it on the other side.

Point the camera at anything, intentionally out of focus and press the shutter button.

If you have done everything I said above, the shutter should fire come hell or high water. If it doesn't, then either there's a custom function I've forgotten about or there is a fault with your camera or lens.

Please try this and let us know. Again I appologise for it being rather patronising, but as a new user to the system you could have missunderstood what some control or other actually does and the last thing we want is for you to send your camera off for repair only to find it was user error all along.


I forgot to say, if this does work then we'll start with what you should need to do to get action shots to work.

I don't think the alleged 64bit memory plane on the Pentium and later chips counts. I think the CPU has to support x86_64 instructions, therefore it has to be either an AMD Athlon64/Opteron/Phenom or an Intel Core2/i7/i5/late P4?

even so there aren't that many AthlonXP/Intel Core and earlier chips still flying about and those machines which do still run probably have other reasons for not upgrading to the latest version of Windoze.

Good work!

I love the science museum, I am like a little boy in a toy store every time I go there.

A dark horse when reversed. I had a lot of fun with a 35-80 and a reversing ring when I was first mucking about with macro photography. Just one of those things which on paper should never work but in practice is better than expected.

I've seen gausian blur produce a harsher OOF region than that. That lens is incredible. I want one!!!!

we reached the point several years ago where unless you're doing it for a living and therefore every second makes a difference, the latest CPU doesn't matter a jot unless your gaming. An Athlon XP can crunch any numbers the average person will need fast enough that you wont see the difference between a 4 year old box and the latest machine.

On the other hand images keep getting bigger. RAM makes a big difference, particularly if you ever stitch multiple images into a panorama. Try loading 10x 10+MP image into Hugin and then pretend 1GB of RAM is enough!

Similarly HDD space just disappears faster and faster with the new cameras. you can never have too much.

The Sigma lenses tend to incorrectly identify themselves, I used to have a 28-200 which thought it was a Pentax FA28-105.

I would expect that all will be well as long as your two sigmas think they are different lenses, and don't identify themselves as any Pentax lens you actually have.

lol genius!

for me the question is somewhat different:

"Why are Pentax the only maker sensible enough to maintain AA power supply capability in their DSLR line?"

If you get the grip even the K7 can run on AA's in a pinch, it's a big selling point for me.

on the other hand, we are currently in tomorrows "good old days".

Enjoy them while they last folks!!