I had a look at the Sigma compatability list for the EF-500 DG Super with Pentax bodies and the K10D isn't mentioned although other P-TTL Pentax bodies are.

To give an idea of what might be a reasonable price for the Pentax 28-200 - I just sold mine (excellent condition with the original box, caps, hood and a 77mm UV filter) on Ebay and it made just under £100.

I think you'll probably find that none of these sorts of lenses will be really sharp wide open - needing stopping down to F8 or so for that.

I had the Pentax 28-200 and found that a pretty decent performer, however I've heard that the later Tamron (not the one the Pentax is based on) is a bit better.

Given that none of these lenses are likely to be mind-blowing wide open it might be an option to consider keeping the one you've got an adding a prime or two (even manual focus ones) for when you need real sharpness and larger apertures.

I live on the westernmost fringes of Edinburgh and while we did get lovely bright blue skies yesterday it was early in the day - my garden pic in the other thread was taken in the morning. The sunset pics were taken around 3-4pm and the blue skies were gone by then but there were some nice cloud formations. I'd actually headed up into the Pentlands with the 645 and Flektogon 50mm but didn't use it because I can't fit grads to it yet (it has an 86mm filter ring) - fortunately I'd also packed the K10D and 16-45 and I do have graduates for that.

Nice shots BTW.

I was thinking about HDR (which I've yet to try) but it wasn't an option this time because I didn't have a tripod with me. Even with the 2-stop ND grad I might have been better off exposing for the sky then brightening the foreground in PS. That's what I did with the 1st shot (1/125 @ F14) but not with the 2nd (1/60 @ F5.6).

The weather has been nice but very cold here today so I took a few snaps in the garden then later went for a walk in the hills behind my house:



K10D, DA 16-45, ND grad



K10D, DA 16-45, ND grad



K10D, Cosina 100mm F3.5 macro



K10D, Cosina 100mm F3.5 macro



*istDS, Sigma 10-20mm, Cokin IR filter

When I'm shooting landscapes with the DSLR I expose for the sky, for the reasons discussed here.

Shooting film, even though I often will be scanning the results, I don't necessarily take the same approach, but instead would be looking for a more balanced exposure (I don't know if this is right or wrong but it dates back to shooting slide film in my pre-digital days). With this particular film the problem was that I didn't have grads to fit the lenses being used (I was primarily just testing the camera) and therefore in most cases the sky is too light, making it difficult to preserve any detail in the sky. If anything I'm pleasantly surprised by the results I got, especially as there are a couple of shots I quite like.

Trying to get useful web images from the film has been useful practice of my photoshop skils though! Here's another one from the same B&W roll:




As well as having no grads to fit I've also no hood for this lens (or for the other two lenses I have for the 645) so there was a lot of flare in this shot. I've got the 45-85mm zoom coming - with a hood! - which I do have filter fittings for so I won't be going out of my way to get hoods & filter fittings for the others.

I've processed B&W before but only 35mm. I've still got all the kit though so I will be giving it a try again. Back then (10 years ago) I used to use Rodinal for all my developing - any suggestions on a general purpose developer now? I'll mostly be shooting Ilford B&W.

The lab I used is a professional one - it was the first (and probably the last!) time I'd used them though. It's not all their fault that I'm having difficulty getting good results from this film though as I was shooting without using a grad filter (because I don't have a Cokin adaptor yet for the 60mm filter size) and that means the sky is a lot brighter than would be ideal.

I've been trying a number of different methods. My scanner can do 16-bit greyscale and 48 bit colour but with B&W it doesn't seem to make much difference. What does work though is scanning the film as a positive and then inverting it in PS - for some reason that seems to give a little more detail.

I use elements so don't have Channel Mixer however I have some "Power Tools" (from an advanced PS elements book) and one of those works in the say way as channel mixer so I can alter then amount of red, green and blue I mix into B&W.

Ken - what lab are you using to do your development & scans? I had the developing done at Trumps in Edinburgh this time however I wasn't that impressed. All the films have marks/splashes on them and the even managed to lose one of my films for a few days.

I'm scanning using an Epson 4490 flatbed at the moment. The main difficulty I'm finding is in getting the right balance between drama and detail. If I go for a high contrast, punch image then I'm losing highlight and shadow detail.

I'm not great at converting digital shots to B&W either, for similar reasons.

There are all from negatives.