Thanks Peter, will try it out soon...

Prieni

Hi Rob,

congratulations, the AF 360 really is great. I have some difficulty, though, getting the high speed sync to work. Two weeks ago I did some indoor shots (and some outside that needed some flash support). I usually shoot selecting the aperture and let the camera decide the speed. Whenever I used the flash it would set the speed to 1/60 or 1/45 s. Indoors that wasn't a big deal but the outdoor shots were overexposed, since 1/60 was too slow on a sunny day. I didn't have much time to play around thoroughly with the settings, the little things I did were in vain.

Any ideas?

Prieni

Mannesty,

that's interesting. As far as I understand the Adobe WEB-pages
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html
the *istDS is not listed as supported. Good to hear that it works anyway (I have a *istD but wanted to work a few files from a friend who has a *istDS).

Cheers,
Prieni

Is the *istDS supported by the latest camera raw plugin for Photoshop CS from Adobe? I can't find it on the list of supported cameras, but then, it might have slipped out of the list...

Cheers,
Prieni

The new version of Picasa is out http://www.picasa.com
I made sure it supports PEF files. I love this software and it's free (from Google).

Prieni

There's a new place around to discuss and exhibit your photos:
http://www.fotocommunity.com
Fotocommunity started as a german (i.e. fotocommunity.de) forum and now has gone international. Well, still there is a huge majority of Germans making up the membership (every .de member has free membership at .com for 14 days). So it would be nice to see some other people joining. There is a free membership that has a lower upload limit and no access to the 'nude art' section.
Check it out and see if you like it. But be aware, you might run into german help texts etc. (please contact the support to let them know).

Enjoy,
Prieni

P.S.: My involvement in fotocommunity is nothing more than being a member...

Hi tijean,

have a look at my gallery at http://www.photoboxgallery.com/Prieni
or at http://home.fotocommunity.de/prieni/ (it's in German and not all of the photos were taken with the *istD. For the ones that are you can find it in the annotation to the pictures).

You also can have a look at MattMatic's pbase gallery, though I don't know for sure which ones were taken with the *istD (however, the file names are a bit of a giveaway, if they start IMGP I would guess they are *istD pictures):
http://www.pbase.com/mattmatic

I'm sure others here have links to other galleries...

Cheers,
Prieni

Is it possibly that you take away the camera too early (i.e. when the shutter is still open)? For camera shake alone the ghosts (at least in the first picture) seem to be too far off the main object picture.

Hi anneoc,

you can download from NeatImage directly (just did a download of the NeatImage Demo setup for the 4 version, which I didn't try so far). I didn't buy it although I think you can produce files other than JPG with a licenced version. The Pentax profiles are for JPG*** and TIF settings (NeatImage doesn't read RAW directly). The profiles are for different ISO settings and you can do your own profiles. Yes, it's a bit of a learning curve and you can produce very good results as well as rubbish easily with this program.

Concerning the dpi setting, it's not really important. You always can change that in Photoshop (without altering the resolution of the picture; if you change from 72 dpi to 300 dpi it puts about 4 times the resolution in the dialogue boxes; just set them back to 3008 x 2008 again). I think you also can set the dpi in the RAW import plugin of Photoshop.

You're right with the space on the card, PEF (i.e. raw) images have about 13-14 megs so on my 1 GB drive I get about 72 pictures. On holiday trips I have used JPG so far but I think in the long run I will get an image tank to download the pics and free up the flash drive again. Once you get used to using PEF you don't want to go back, it gives you a lot of freedom and it's amazing what you can get out of pictures that are not correct exposed.
Shooting in TIF is a bit pointless, I think. The resulting files are even bigger than PEF files and you can't change exposure and WB any more.

Best of luck with Neat,
Prieni

Yes, the plugin for Photoshop CS (unfortunately not suitable for earlier versions of Photoshop) can be downloaded from Adobe.

I can't imagine that the white balance setting should be responsible for getting noise. (If you use the Photoshop plugin and shoot in RAW mode you can change the WB; but that can be done with the Pentax software as well if I remember correctly; haven't touched it since I got the PS plugin).

For the shots that you have taken already it might be worth trying NeatImage on them. MattMatic has done some noise profiles of the *istD and different ISO settings. You can download them from neatimage.com

Might be worthwile to do a comparison with slow shutter speeds and different ISO settings.

Cheers,
Prieni