Agreed! I actually find it's more than twice as fast as USB 2.0. I use my e-sataII external drives via a 2 port SATAII plug-in card to my new ACER laptop (it was several times quicker than my older Pentium 4 desktop with the two 200GB sataI drives!) I use it in dual screen mode with my 20" 1600 x 1200 HP LP2065 monitor, it makes a nice affordable combo.

For Image Management there is nothing superior to IDimager (but no Mac version). It has a built in Raw converter (based on DCRaw), but for the best results I always revert to Silkypix.

They are easily integrated, you can either drag and drop the images(s) into SP or use a user definable quick key.

I keep evaluating each version of Lightroom, but it continually fails to impress, especially with regard to colour and overall IQ, plus it's also somewhat limited as a image management system.

IDimager is also fully XMP compliant so any tagging/grading is bi-directionally compatible with LR, Bridge etc. Try it, and also look at the user forum and Wiki. Gets my vote every time and I've tried all the DAM systems generally available.

There are some useful "tastes" for B&W (and colour) created by John Nevill which can be found on his website which conatins some useful additions and an e-book on SP:
http://www.eos-images.com/silkypix-resources/film-tastes

You can create your own as well.

I would also recommend visiting the Silkypix forum: http://www.shortcutinc.com/forums/index.php

I use a 1TB Samsung SATAII drive, housed in an external e-sataII + USB 2.0 case. Just brilliant, very fast and quiet.

Drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143288
Case: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143544
or here (slightly cheaper, but not always in stock): http://svp.co.uk/product/sumvision_apex_plus_35_sata_hard_drive_enclosure_mte013

I also have two (older) Seagate 200GB SATA 1 drives, in the same cases, as archive drives. Not so fast, but fine for archiving.

For those wanting 2.5" external drives with USB 2.0 and e-sata, I recommend the WD Scorpio black (7200 rpm) 320GB housed in an external e-sataII + USB 2.0 case. I use one, works flawlessly.

Drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149432
Case: http://svp.co.uk/product/sumvision_usb20_esata_25_hard_drive_enclosure_mte045

Cheers, Richard

Firstly, I apologise for the width of this post, but I wanted to demonstrate some wide panoramas shown further down in my response.

I made a pdf that shows the difference in FOV for different focal lengths, you can find it here:
http://www.bitz4.co.uk/richard/photog/FOV_Nov_05.pdf

Regarding the 10-20, it may be that I had 2 bad examples, but I have tried 3 more samples since and they appeared much the same and one was even worse.

Personally, I feel the design is compromised as the field curvature is pretty poor and that leads to AF problems especially at the wide end. My standards for lens performance is pretty high and they didn't live up to my expectation, for some people they may be fine. Here is an example of the poor field curvature, it was taken at f8 and 10mm, see how badly the edge performance is compared to the very centre, the DOF at that focal length should be from around 1m to infinity.
(This is a full size image):
http://www.bitz4.co.uk/richard/photog/wa_lenses/IMGP9017.jpg

The 12-24 is IMO in a class above. It's sharp wide open and has what appears to be a much wider colour gamut, which is a feature of Pentax's best lenses.

Another problem with wide FOV lenses is that below 14mm (over 90 deg FOV) the perspective stretch becomes quite severe, here's an example (my wife is not that wide!)




As a comparison here is a shot taken with the DA 10-17 fisheye at 10mm and a de-fished version so you can see the differences!






This is why I'm not that enamoured with 10mm rectilinear lenses, the perspective stretch at even 12mm is noticeable. I think I would prefer a fisheye below 14mm as I find the fisheye effect less disconcerting than the perspective stretch.

Regarding my statements about stitched images, I took shots from an identical position using the 10-20 and 3 shots taken with my DA 16-45 and stitched. I think you will notice the difference even at this reduced for web size. When printed, the difference is enormous!

Even though the field of view is the same, the distance perspective of the stitched shot is much more realistic, the 10mm shot has exaggerated the distance perspective.

The 10-20




The 3 stiched shots




I hope this goes some way to answer your questions.

Regards

It's very nice, but it's only available as a PS plug-in, PTLens is both free standing and plug-in which may be important to the user, not everyone has Photoshop.

I had the Sigma 10-20 and found the rendering fairly poor in comparison with my Pentax lenses, the colour was always muted, it seemed as though the colour gamut was limited in comparison, so even shooting in Raw didn't help much. They, I had 2 examples, exhibited severe focussing issues at the wide end, probably due to poor field curvature and also needed to be stopped down significantly to get good sharpness and then diffraction took it's toll. I ended up not using them very much and reverted back to my 16-45 which, whenever I wanted a wider FOV, I just took 2 or 3 shots and stitched them.

I also had the opportunity to try the DA 12-24 and 10-17 over a couple of weeks and they were significantly better IMO. Obviously the 10-17 is a fisheye, but for creative photography it's brilliant. The 12-24 is a fine lens, sharp wide open and has very low distortion as well, especially from 14mm upwards. The range up to 24 is also really useful as a street lens, I found that I needed a lot less lens swapping than with the Sigmas. Nevertheless I still haven't opted to buy either because, as I said above, I find stitching enough of a solution to my wide FOV needs and, as you say, £400 is a significant sum, but friends who have the 12-24 say they would never be without it.

Tough call!

Richard

I would recommend that you seriously consider PTLens: http://www.epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html.

I know it's not free, but it's worth every penny of the $25 licence fee as it can also correct the various distortions present in rectilinear lenses as well.

Richard

It is the Japanese version only.

The English version is due in the Spring. As a moderator on the Silkypix forum, we've been promised advance notification regarding the English beta release as several of us have requested that we be involved in the English text as we would like to avoid some of the wierd "Japlish" that it has suffered from in the past.

Pentax Europe GmbH (European Headquarters) are supplied by Pentax Japan.

Pentax UK is supplied via Pentax Europe and the products are supplied from a central location to all the countries covered by the European operation and billed to those operations in Euros and the local prices are calculated according to an internal exchange rate decided on from time to time. If there is a substantial shift in the exchange rates, the local subsidiaries will adjust their prices accordingly.

The Pentax subsidiaries covered by Pentax Europe are:

Pentax Germany
Pentax UK
Pentax France
Pentax Benelux
Pentax Switzerland
Pentax Scandinavia.

I believe that many other makers have similar operational structures with European headquarters and warehousing based within the EU and use Euros as the base currency. Those European countries that use the Euro are unaffected. Maybe a few in the UK now wish we had adopted the Euro rather than stick with the Pound!

One dealer has reported that he has had notification of price rises up to 25%! (Not from Pentax!)

I hope this explains the situation.