yes, sorry about that. That camera came before I saw the light and bought a DL2

Heres the proof - Pentax does indeed live on

http://www.pbase.com/mr_ist/image/70743337

It was good to see 'PENTAX' all around the stadium - incidentally the only camera company advertising there!

p.s hope the link works ; i've never used pbase before

Hi, and well done for finding this forum - your questions in the right place

I don't think the pentax dslrs have the in-camera crop function. My *ist DL2 certainly doesn't and I'd be surprised if the K100d does. Even if it does, you be able to much more accurately crop a picture if you do it on a PC with photoshop or irfanview (www.irfanview.com) I would always try and get closer to the subject for the initial photo instead of cropping one that was taken from further away - it isn't always possible but it'll keep the image quality

hope that helps you

Thanks v. much for the quick reply - thats exactly it - i wasn't in manual mode. Everything is working as it should now I'm dead chuffed - it is good condition and only cost me a tenner at a pawn brokers shop!

Today i got my hands on one of these lenses - but I have a small problem It is the M version, and I'm pretty sure the stops work correctly because when the lens is off the camera I see the iris change when i turn the ring. However, when the lens is on the camera, turning the aperture ring does't have any effect on the aperture

So i'm stuck at f1.7.

Great results at this aperture, but having the full use of the lens would be nice. Do I have a faulty lens or is there something elementary that I may be doing wrong?

Thanks v. much for pointing that out - I didnt realise there was a difference, although I think I need the difference explained as I'd have thought a filter with grey fading to clear would give the same effect as an ND grad.

Hi,

after seeing some great photos that have only been made possible with neutral density filters, I would like to purchase one. As they come in many different colours, which would be the best to go for? blue would be good for emphasizing the midday sky but not so good for sunsets - so I'm looking for the most versatile - would this be grey?

I'm really glad I found this forum - thanks to all the people who have helped me out so far.

It is listed on Bojidar Dimitrov's Pentax K-mount page as a wide angle prime.

From the website "For a long time it was thought that this lens existed only as a prototype, and until this day I am not aware of any one in existence. There are rumors that there were about five lenses sold, and in March 2004, I have held in my hands the SMC PENTAX 1:1.4 35mm dedicated hood, complete with its packaging box. So now I am willing to believe that indeed very few examples of this lens were sold in 1980."

Just shows that that website is a veritable treasure trove of information!

for interest, does anyone know if the in-camera picture rotation feature is lossless or not?

Thankx for the help everyone - I already had irfanview but didn't know about the lossless rotation feature. Definitely worth knowing about. I hadn't thought that windows 'exploder!' might reduce the image quality whilst rotating.