Just building on Gwyn's mention of Ansel Adams, Adam's famous quote "The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways."
Don't think there are many people who'd argue that AA wasn't a "true photographer".
I do tend to try and get the RAW capture as correct as possible in camera, and aim for fairly minimal post processing. Exception is high contrast landscapes where I will typically reduce the highlights and increase shadows in LR to get closer to what the eye saw.

Paul

Yeah I have the manual focus Cosina version and its great.

Not at all bad at infinity either (with the front macro adaptor removed, obviously).
I occasionally have a "100mm day" and just use that as my sole lens.
Always happy with the images.

Paul

Couldn't resist. Ordered k3ii + 16-85. Arrives tomorrow. Can't wait!

Yes, Stellarium is very good, I use it to plan shoots.
Paul

If the K-r is similar to the K5 in terms of its power needs (and a quick google suggests that it is) then it will need 8.2volts, it won't run off 5.
Perhaps a grip might solve your problem?

Paul

First of all, very good effort for a first attempt! A key point for Milky Way images is post processing. It really helps if you have shot RAW, nor sure if this is RAW or JPEG. In adobe camera raw / Lightroom, I apply the following for my milky way shots. You may have to do this via a graduated filter as you want to leave foreground as is.

If you can work with the whole image without making the foreground look unreal, then increasing your white point and decreasing your black point may help.
If that spoils your foreground and you need to work via graduated filter affecting the sky only, try playing around with shadows and highlights - how much of each is a matter of experimentation....also in the grad filter, increase clarity - helps astro photos.

Paul

Oh and they also had s/h 43mm and 77mm limiteds in silver. Didn't ask the price but again mention it in case anyones interested.

Just in case anyone is interested and local. I popped into Manchester city centre yesterday and stopped by the Real Camera Company at the back of Piccadilly. I have no connection with them, I just pop by from time to time to see what's interesting in Pentax glass. They had one I've never heard of before, a Takumar 105mm f2.8.

The reviews on the US forum mention this as an M42 lens, but pretty sure this was a K mount version. They seemed to want around £80-90 for it, comes with a nice metal hood. I eventually concluded it was too close to what I had already, but mention it on here 'cos its rare and someone may be interested.

Didn't have a detailed look so proceed at your own risk. If interested and local, best to give them a ring to check still available and go down to check it out.

Cheers all.

Paul

Leaning towards K3-ii as I virtually never use flash and would definitely use the astrotracer and pixel shift. Logic tells me that I should stay with APS-C and ignore the siren call of full frame, but probably going to delay a purchasing decision until I find out more about pricing and specs of the upcoming FF. I actually don't need 36, 42 or whatever megapixels, 16 from the K5 is fine - but I do use all of the K5's dynamic range on occasions, and the slight step down from 14.1 ev for the K5 to 13.4 for the K3 is a concern. Wondering what the FF dynamic range will be? If its the same sensor as the A7R that's 14.1EV also.
Enough ramblings
Paul

Using the standard USB lead that came with the K5, one end into the camera and the other into the PC. This lead was around 0.5m long and I needed a longer link, so I got a 3m powered USB extension cable and connected the leads in series, which works fine.
Another piece of advice - when I first used PKTether it was very flaky and unstable. Some reading convinced me that this could be due to conflicts between USB drivers, so after some research I ran DriveCleanup, which gets rid of old USB drivers and cleans up driver entries in the registry. Extremely stable after that.
Obviously PKTether is not going to work for those who need wireless control, or want to control their cameras from phone or tablet, but for my requirements it works very well.
Paul