Anybody got any experience with these products?

http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/digiphotoequip.htm

ZENON MAGNEFLASH 68 as a Flash unit

and

http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/digiphotoequip.htm

ZENON MagneSource55

A FLAT-PANEL, WHITE-LIGHT SOURCE FOR SLIDE COPYING

I am particularly interested in experiences of anyone with the flat panel for slide copying.

Yes this is why I am attracted to the Green-clean I mentioned above, even though it comes with wipes in the full package, I would be very wary of doing that myself.

http://www.green-cleanusa.com/home.html

Kimbo,

In the morning a camera shop will clean my focussing screen and mirror using this. If it as easy and good as they say I will buy the travel kit.

What about a vacuum cleaner? Obviously set to its lowest power setting and using the smallest attachment piece.

Remove lens. switch on hoover and place somewhere near the lens opening for a few seconds.

Wouldn't that get rid of all the rubbish, without damaging the camera - obviously you don't poke the attachment inside the camera.

Did not work!

I tried today an experiment. Kodak Carousel, project onto white wall, take photos with the *ist DL. I am indeed impressed with the results. Not super sharp, but as I said I am at the beginning of an experiment. I have acquired on loan a projector screen and the next pictures will be taken of the projected image using the DA 40mm pancake lens, which I find to be a real winner, I am sure glad I bought that as my standard lens.

I have about 16 Carousels to go through. However in each are some badly faded/poorly taken shots. If I have more than 10 slides in some of those carousels worth keeping, I will be pleased. Incidentally, I used to develop my own slides, and it is these ones which have not faded - even though they all date back to the late seventies. Some of the "processed" images are very bad - mirroring what I feel about the usual printing services of today.

When I have one or two images I will put them on my web site for people to see.

From my limited Pentax experience, I would recommend the DA 50-200, I wondered whether to buy a zoom at all, so I bought a fixed plus this zoom, and I am really pleased with the results of this lens. Very light and I have no difficulty hand-holding most of the time.

Check out these pages:-

http://web.mac.com/stevenbutterworth/iWeb/Animals/Sheep.html
The first 5 shots are all taken with the DA 50-200 with the standard flash in a dark barn.

All shots on this page shot with this zoom lens, in very bright fresh snow conditions.
http://web.mac.com/stevenbutterworth/iWeb/Switzerland/Rotkreuz2.html

MattMatic

Thanks for the link, I must investigate the software you use. Hadn't notice the collar before, for so pleased with the whites of the eye and teeth. Yes I appreciate the quality of that lens.

I will post later a photo taken at F16 and 8 seconds inside a church, same lens, no flash and not that much daylight pouring in on a wintery grey day.

Forgot to make the two links above preview-able as well as downloads, and changed them to .jpg files from .tiff and .pdf

Another example of close-up with the DA 40mm Limited lens on a DL:-

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=stevenbutterworth&templatefn=FileSharing9.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.9.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en

This one was done using on camera pop-up flash plus one other slave, plus the Leica Elpro 3 close-up lens attached to the filter thread of the DA 40mm. AV priority set 60th at 2.8.[/url]

Should have logged in before I sent the last reply with my web page info.