I've been using my 400FTZ with the DS and it's been excellent so far, in fact I've found the exposure control better using that than with the build in flash which tends to overexpose (often by a lot) when used at shorter distances with fast lenses such as an 85mm F1.4.

For example at full-head portrait distance with the 85mm F1.4 the built in flash overexposes massively unless a very small aperture is used. The 400FTZ copes much better.

I'm not sure what P-TTL is supposed to give me, but so far it doesn't seem to be anything I need!

I've also used the DS with one of the older Pentax flashes (200T I think) and it also works fine although it needs set for ISO and the camera needs to be set to the correct aperture for the high or low power setting.

I nearly found a use for one of the picture modes on my DS tonight. I took my camera and a light tripod with me on a mountain bike night ride and had a play to see if I could get a shot with me and my bike exposed with a decent sky as well. The night scene mode did surprisingly well, but not as well as the old technique of setting a manual exposure for the sky before popping the flash up:




The sky looks orange because I was in the hills above Edinburgh and that's the glow from the streetlights etc.[/img]

I used to travel light with just the FA* 24mm and 85mm lenses and a single MZ-5 body, or heavy with a Z1p and 28-70 and 80-200 F2.8 zooms, really heavy with a Bronica ETRS setup or super-light with a Contax G1 and 24, 45 and 90mm lenses. Of those the first system got the most use by a considerable margin (I eventually sold the Bronica and Contax systems because I wasn't using them enough) and I'd quite like to get back to something similar with digital. The 12-24 matched with 50mm and 85mm primes sounds ideal so I think I'll need to get saving for the 12-24.

Anyone know the cheapest UK supplied for the 12-24?

A very good rule, but sadly learned too late for my FA* 24mm F2 which I'm missing lots. The really sad thing is that I bought it when I lived in Hong Kong and it was vastly cheaper than it would have been here. At UK prices I'd have to sell a child to get one again.

As well as money I also need permission from SWMBO, and that's harder to get! It's my birthday in March though so perhaps if I'm a good boy until then...

The 12-24mm is the one that really interests me, and I'd possibly add a FA 50mm to bridge the cap between it and my longer lenses. Already I've found my old SMC-M 50mm F1.7 getting more use that it ever did in my film camera days.

This is just me having a whine, so apologies!

In the run-up to the purchase of my *istDS I rationalised my lens collection, thinking that several of them would not seem much use in this digital age. After a month or so of only having the kit 18-55mm lens at wide and normal lengths I'm regretting the sale of many of those now because the kit lens really isn't all that good - IMHO it's not even as good as the old SMC-FA 28-200 I used to use for point and shoot duties.

I'm totally sorted (better off even in this day of 1.5x magnification) at the mild to reasonable telephoto coverage as I've got an Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200 F2.8 zoom, an FA* 85mm F1.4 and a couple of SMC-M 50mm F1.7's.

In the wide to normal range I've only got the 18-55mm kit lens, the aforementioned 28-200 and a Pheonix 19-35mm (it's the same lens as the Cosina and Vivitar ones) and to be quite honest none of those are much good.

Given I recently sold such beauties as a Tokina ATX-Pro 28-70 F2.6-2.8, an FA* 24mm F2, a SMC-M 35mm F2, a Sigma 28mm F1.8 and a SMC-M 40mm F2.8 I have to say I'm not feeling pretty dumb as it's going to take a while to find replacements at decent prices. What an idiot...

I'm generally enjoying the *istDS a lot except the for the aforementioned, plus I've also found that the built in flash needs a fair bit of camera to subject distance in order to to over-expose, much more so than any of my 35mm bodies ever did.

I hadn't really thought about using them in the studio but that does make sense. My studio lights aren't powerful (they're the Jessops Portaflash ones) but even with those I'm generally at F8 or F11 with the 200 ISO setting and sometimes I'd like to use a wider aperture. I must see about picking up some Cokin ND's and giving them a go.

You do get screw on ones but they're generally not much use as it forces you to put the horizon across the centre of your picture. The Cokin ones are a lot more useful as they're long enough that you can place the start of the graduation where you like.

The ND ones are (more or less) neutral, but there others such as sunset & tobacco grads, but those are less useful.

The main issue is that if you'd bought say Photoshop for a G5 Mac and upgraded to an Intel one you'd either have to re-purchase the software for the new platform or put up with it running (very) slowly in emulation mode.

It was inevitable that they had to make the change though because the heat issues with the G5 processor meant that they were struggling to compete in the increasingly important laptop marketplace.

You mean like Apple are just about to?

With the film SLR bodies I'm used to then moving the aperture ring puts you into aperture priority mode. It would be nice if the aperture ring worked the same on the DSLR's, but instead it would appear that Pentax are planning to follow the herd and do without aperture rings from now on.