For general work I find that Faststone does most things easily and quickly and it's free. A really good program. Don't be put off by the price.


Faststone

Thanks for that. I had thought of going manual but the thought of having paid what is, for me, a small fortune, for a camera that seems to have every conceivable things to set up, to set it to manual breaks my heart.

OK, I have a bit of a problem. Shortly after I purchased a K5 I lost my interest in photography for a couple of years. So, I decided to get back into it and booked a studio shoot with a model. My problem is, I've forgotten what little I knew about the camera and the manual might as well be written in Yiddish for all the use it is right now.

So, can anyone advise re the best settings for a studio environment, using flash, mainly. I don't plan on doing anything fancy, just getting back into practice again. All advice gratefully received.

Faststone also has colour adjustment settings. A bit of a fiddle at first but once you have the settings then it quick.

Use Faststone and then click on the negative option on the left hand menu. Job done.

Here's a couple of images with neither technical nor artistic merit from slide and negative from pictures taken in Malta at least 40 years ago using a light box and DSLR as described. These were just be way of experimentation so I didn't give much thought to making the best of the various modes on the DSLR, or was overly worried about keeping the film flat, so these could likely be improved upon.

Edit:
The images on my computer have much better definition on zooming in than on the ones in the post here. some sort of quality reduction for posting I assume.

If you have a decent quality digital SLR, then buy a small light box from ebay, about £12 to £15, mount the camera on a tripod and with a bit of fiddling you will get excellent digital images. The right size UV filter laid on the negative will stop the negative curling. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty quick too. A friend digitized about 500 slides in what he described as very short order and was delighted with the results. Certainly better quality than any inexpensive scanner.

The best results I've had for 'scanning' negatives was to use a light box (eBay for about £10) and a decent SLR on a tripod. Once it's set up it's quick too.

I can get a holder for Alkaline batteries from eBay for £12 no problem. Holders for Nicads / Nimh are different because they have different connector points because of the difference in voltage. I have replacement Nicad batteries ready and waiting but I can't get the holder part without risk of breaking it. I'm hoping that I'm just missing something on the construction, but if not, I'm hoping that someone can tell me which bits to break.

I have a couple of Metz hammerhead flashguns that I think are just great. But...

The NiCd batteries in the battery pack are just about stuffed. I'm looking to change them, preferably for NiMH, but I can't get the pack apart to do this. Anyone done such a thing? In theory it seems entirely possible, and there should be no problems voltage or charging wise. The problem just seems to be down to how to get the pack apart without trashing it.