The image is reversed however it is great for low level and macro work - particulary when using a wide angle lens (sigma 10-20) and you are trying to focus on foreground interest - Saves me lying on the ground anyway! Example here

I don't have a picture of it to hand however if you check out ebay.co.uk, you can see the picture of it by searching for item - 310210313671

The reason for sale is I have now purchased a new zigview and so I no longer have need for it. The condition is as per the original advert.


Cheers


Rob.

Hi Guys,


I've got an Olympus OM Varimagni angle finder for sale in excellent condition and with the leather case. Fits fine on my K10d and I think it's fine for other Pentax model although you'd have to check! This is a metal construction item which is a much better bet than the plastic Chinese ones on ebay.

£50 inc postage to the UK. Will post via ebay if you prefer.

Cheers

Rob Tunstall.

Got the camera back without the repair as I requested. It works fine with the 8Gb SD cards I have so I'm going to live with it as I was going to replace the camera this year anyway. Very disappointed with the service as I did ask Pentax to give me a statement about the card etc so I could pursue Sandisk etc... but they wouldn't look at it without paying the repair charge. I think it's arguable that putting a recommended SD card into the slot counts as impact damage.

The camera came back 2 days later than promised, packaged in a box that wasn't big enough for the k10d box so it was bound with tape at the top as the lid wouldn't close. This in turn has meant that my original camera box is torn now.

It's a real shame - I've been a big fan of Pentax and the actual kit however this sorry incident has left a bitter taste in the mouth.

Thanks for the updates guys. I bought it from Cameraworld and it doesn't look like they are a pro centre. Pentax have the camera and all the memory cards already. When I spoke to Pentax this morning, they said this counts as "impact" damage and so there is nothing they could do on the price. I've chased Sandisk about this and whether the cards are genuine however I don't think that they are fake at all.

>It's like a CD, the physical dimensions are the same, and therefore they fit in any player.

I measured the cards for differences using a micrometre and they are identical in size. I believe it is a slight difference in the pins or the read/write tab as the card got stuck when I put it in and now they are the only cards which can be read - None of my existing cards work. This means they MUST be different in configuration in some way.

Pwynnej - Thanks very much.

Matt - It's not the write protect tab but I think that may be the problem inside the camera - I think that's where it got stuck when I put the card in first time. It's such a pain and I guess a really trivial repair but there is no getting past the standard 150 quid repair charge from pentax. I did note that Nikon are offering a 2 year warranty.

The cards which caused the problem are the standard speed 8GB Sandisk ones and they work fine. My existing ones are sandisk 2gb extreme 3's which no longer work.

Pete,


That's a good point which crossed my mind but they were from 7dayshop rather than ebay so I cannot believe they would be fake.

The 150 quid repair just doesn't make it worthwhile having it done when it's only worth 250 quid second hand anyway. I think I'll probably replace it and keep the K10d as a spare as it still works.


Rob.

Hi there,


I just wondered if anyone else has had a problem with using Sandisk 8GB SDHC cards with the Pentax slrs? I got a couple of the standard speed ones for christmas which are listed as compatible on sandisk's website. When I put the SD card into my K10d, I noticed that it was an unsually tight squeeze. When I tried to release the card, I found that it then required much more pressure than normal. The Sandisk cards read fine however the bad news is that now none of my existing SD cards work anymore and produce a memory error. I think the Sandisk 8Gb card has a slight difference to it's pin layout and has altered the pins inside the camera.

The bad news is Pentax want £150 to repair it as it's 18 months old and hence outside of warranty. It's counted as impact damage and so carries a standard repair cost.

Just wanted to give a heads up and wondered if anyone else has had problems with SD cards.

Cheers

Rob.

Matt,


With regards to the original post, I wonder if you can offer some advice as I think I've come across that behaviour with hss mode. I was using a Metz 48 trying to flash balance the sky with some yellow flowers during the midday sun. I had the flash in HSS mode and I was underexposing on manual mode by a couple of stops to get a really blue sky. I found that I was having to dial in +3 to expose the flowers correctly however that was really hit and miss, and sometimes I'd get a completely dark shot.

In the end, I resorted to the non hss method of waiting till evening when I could shoot at 1/180s with an aperture set for the sky to underexpose. I then dialled in the power on the flash manually.

Can you offer any advice as I'd really like to use the HSS and p-ttl for this kind of stuff but I always end up going back to manual.

Thanks Don - It was drops of white milk on a black acrylic sheet using a home made dropper system using a milk carton and some tubing. The colours are food colouring although I did push the saturdation on the red a bit.

There's some amazing examples of this kind of stuff by Martin Waugh which puts my attempts to shame!

http://www.liquidsculpture.com/fine_art/index.htm

He has also some great techinical stuff on flash power/duration aswell.
http://www.martin-waugh.com/?p=8

Cheers


Rob.

The secret is to use the flash with a minimum of flash power which should get you 1/10000s effective shutter speed.

I believe you can get even higher shutter speeds of 1/30,000 with an autoflash by using a piece of paper to feed back the flash directly to the auto sensor.

Either use a trigger system or a shutter speed of 1/2 a second and fire the flash manually. Here's a shot I'm really pleased with using a trigger.

Rob.