Hi Barry & welcome to this forum.

I bought my K-r last autumn after reading reviews on this site.
I then became a member and when I asked about longer focal length lenses the unanimous answer was the Pentax DA 55-300 !

So there you are - go ahead and do what you said ("He who dares - Rodney" in the words of Del boy !) I'm sure you won't regret it.

I recently posted in the Gallery a couple of pics I took at Hartland Quay using the K-r with the DA 55-300 ('On the rocks' & 'Altar for the wrecks') These were both hand held on a blustery day last week so they are perhaps not as sharp as they could have been - the posted images are also the jpegs straight from the camera without any touching up. Since this place is local to you they will probably be familiar.

All the best and we look forward to seeing some of your work in the gallery.

Peter

Hi Adam
I have now uploaded another shot taken with my DA55-300 for you to compare. This one 'called Scarlet Elf Cup' was taken on a wildlife shoot in March.
Again the K-r was set on 'P' and left on auto-focus.
The location was a dark area under trees and because of the long minimum focus distance of this lens I had to stand back (on a slippery surface !) and extend the lens fully to 300mm to get a reasonably large image of the fungus. All-in-all I feel this camera/lens combination has served me well (check the exif data to see what it selected.
I'd be interested to hear what others think (the image is in the Wildlife section of the gallery)
I bought this lens on advice from John Riley and others on this forum and don't regret it.
Peter

Hi Adam
I've now uploaded one of my first shots with my DA55-300 to the PentaxUser Gallery, Wildlife section, & called it 'on the run' as it shows a female blackbird about to leave ! (Probably heard the K-r's shutter !)
This is a 'tweeked' jpeg so the exif data doesn't reveal that the lens was at full stretch on 300mm. However, despite the moving subject I think the K-r's 'P' mode has done quite a good job ?
Peter

Hi Adam
Welcome to 'the club' - I'm sure you will find some useful info on this forum, as I have.
Before making any comments on the pics ref the lens it is important for you to give some more details about how they were taken. e.g. the camera, settings, and whether hand held.
I got my K-r last Autumn with the twin lens kit and on advice from this forum I got the 55-300DA for Christmas (luckily before Christmas when Amazon had it on offer !)
I have not used it that much - I got it mainly for wildlife - but did a half-day session in March. I'm not up-to-speed on using manual settings yet so leave the camera on 'P' and auto-focus but limit ISO to 1600 max and save in jpeg + DNG.
I was very pleased with the results from the wildlife shoot, even though they were all hand-held even when the lens was on 300mm.
I've also found that the 'in-camera' jpeg conversion is excellent and haven't managed to get any better pics from 'playing around' with the RAW files ! (Although I HAVE found that the jpegs benefit from a bit of tweeking of levels and sharpening)
If you can post some more info on the pics I'll let you know how they compare with my results.
Incidentally, I also live in Reading !
Peter

I fully agree with this approach. Class 10 SD cards are so cheap nowadays that it is cheaper and far more convenient to simply carry several and swap cards. I always make sure the card in the camera has plenty of space left plus carry at least one spare card as well. After all, they are far smaller and lighter to carry than a hard drive !
Peter

Opened OK in PhotoPusX4 RAW Studio and NO banding ?
Peter

It is worth paying for a decent scanner with a removable panel in the lid for transmission illumination of slides or negatives.
I have an Epson Perfection 3170 which had the added advantage that it came with a free copy of Photoshop Elements (v2 !)
It comes with a range of holders for different sizes of slides and negatives and the software has a versatile range of settings. The images can be saved as jpegs which can then be edited in any of your favourite photo programs.
I think there are now some Epson multifunction printer/scanners which also offer slide and negative scanning?

Peter

Sorry folks - I forgot to add the URL for vPTS as it is not obvious !
It is http://dts8888.com/

Peter

Thanks Algi

I checked out your suggestions and also found some software called 'vPTS' which is shareware costing only $9.95 (i.e. less than 'betterjpeg' as it is less sophisticated only doing date and time stamping)

I downloaded the trial and can confirm it works a treat. I tried batch processing 10 images and it was very quick.

You need to set the 'jpg save' preference to 100% to preserve quality - it defaults to 90%. If you don't want the Time you just select the 'custom' option and delete the script.

I shall recommend this software to my friends who asked how to show the date on photos on their digital photo frame slideshow.

Peter

I'm surprised that it is so long since this question was asked but I'm happy to inform that you CAN do it !

However, I'm rather sorry that I will have to use a 'dirty word' on this Pentax forum !

I have searched for simple ways to print the date and the ONLY software that I have come across so far that makes it EASY is that which came with my CANON S90 (Sorry !!!)

In the ZoomBrowser EX software you can add a variety of captions to any print - I usually just add the date.

I'd point out that I use THIS software for most of my printing jobs including all my K-r images (although it will, of course, only handle the final jpg's)

If anyone else has found a simple way to do it then please post it !

One final contraversial comment - I still think the S90 (or its later versions) is the best 'pocket' camera !

Peter