I gave the trial versions of both a go and decided to buy Elements 4 in the end.

Having recently added a DS body to my system I'm currently using a trial version of Photoshop Elements. That seems to work reasonably well with Pentax RAW format files, however I'm not quite so keen on the dumbed down interface that it uses for image manipulation. The full Photoshop is out of my price range so I was considinging Paintshop Pro X as an alternative. Can anyone advice on it's compatability with Pentax RAW and/or offer any advice on which of the two to go for?

BTW I wrote a review of the 85mm F1.4 for photo.net a while back and it can be seen at http://www.photo.net/equipment/pentax/fa85

I've never used the 77 limited or the 100 Macro but I have had the FA* 85mm F1.4 for a good many years now. I used it on a digital body (DS) for the first time in the studio yesterday and it seems just as impressive with that format as it did when used with film.

I've used it in dimly lit theatres etc. in the past where the 1.4 aperture has been very useful and the results have always been great.

The 100mm macro would be a versatile lens but it is a lot slower than the other lenses plus it's an effective 150mm which is a touch long for general portraiture. Unless you're going to use it's macro capabilities then a 80-200 F2.8 might be a better choice. I've got one of the Tokina ATX-Pro ones and it gives good portrait results although it is quite heavy.

The 77 limited sounds a good lens but personally I'd rather have the FA* 85mm F1.4.

Several years back I had the misfortune/stupidity to drop a lens from waist height out of my rucksack onto concrete. Even more unfortunate it also happened to be my favourite and most expensive lens, an FA* 85mm F1.4.

The lens still operates perfectly well and is optical just as good as it always was, however the impact was all taken by the filter mount which is no longer useable.

Here is a picture of the damage:




Does anyone with experience of these things know if that can be fixed, and at what sort of cost?

Regards
Steve[/img]

It was hard enough finding a DS in the UK - it looked like there was no hope of locating a *istD!

I'm sure I'll get used to the new way of working however after so many years of using the Z1p it'll take a while.

I've found that it's not been necessary to stop down manually with the FA compatible lenses in order to get exposure correct, unlike with the SMC-M ones.

The problem is that I've been using the aperture ring for years now and I much prefer the handling that way. With the Z1p I used to leave the camera set in program mode and as soon as the aperture ring was turned away from the A setting it went into aperture priority which seemed an emininently sensible way of doing things. Even using the A setting the Z1p had better handling for setting the aperture and shutter speeds as it had independant dials for each.

Initial impressions on using my new DS have been good however I'm not too happy about the way the camera works when using the aperture ring on the lenses I already had. I've set the camera so that use of the aperture ring is permitted however it looks like when I set an aperture that way the camera uses centre-weighted average metering instead of multi-segment, and the set aperture doesn't appear in the viewfinder display or photo information. Is that definitely the only way the DS can work when the aperture ring is used? I'd expect that with older lenses such as the SMC-M manual focus ones, but not with the lenses I was actually using (an FA* 85mm F1.4 and a Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200 F2.8 ).

I also noticed that when using on-camera flash you had to be a long way back from the subject with either of those lenses or else the shot would be badly over-exposed. Is that also normal? With a subject a couple of metres away the on-camera flash always overexposed badly with the FA* 85mm F1.4 (no matter what aperture was set) but when I used a hot-shoe flash instead that gave perfect exposure.

Regards
Steve

I'm currently the high bidder on your MX and 50mm 1.4. I'm more interested in the lens that the MX itself though, so if Geoff wanted the camera body I'm sure we could sort something out.

I'm pretty sure most of the B&W film I used from Ilford and Kodak was DX coded.

The best place to find second hand MX's is probably ebay as there are usually a few for sale there.