I'd have thought a standard usb to mini usb would do the job. Have a look in your local Maplins store for one. If you care to PM me, I might have a spare cable lying around.

To be fair, Michael... It does come with free postage and packaging!!

I'm assuming that the workings of the lens is okay (lens pins making contact with the body's contact terminals), so next thing I'd look at on the "faulty" DNG's is the exif data, to see if there is perhaps a data corruption that LR4 is unable to read. After that, I ain't got the foggiest, honest guv'nor!!

Nigel - I used to have a 28mm/f2.8 once upon a long ago, but all I have now is the bog-standard 18-55 that came with the K-r. I think I have a couple of wide-angle shots of the Thai Royal Palace in Hua Hin somewhere. I seem to recall that they were taken from a low angle and had some seriously converging verticals. I'll try to locate them, and try this program out on them.

Nigel - I'm probably going to take the camera out to central London on the weekend, and try a few building shots, then get some practice in. It was the blurb on the DxO website and the accompanying tutorial video that made me think that this program has a bit more to offer in terms of correcting converging verticals.

I'm hoping that I can get a good understanding of the benefits and the pitfalls of this program as I have loads of slides and neg's I need to transfer into a digital format, most of them being of different cities I've travelled globally. On reflection - perhaps the above shots were not a good test of it, as a lot of Thai temples naturally have a degree of curvature as part of the whole design ethos. It wont make me a better photographer, but it might help me to hide my shortcomings a bit better!

Ooops!!.. In my excitement to tell you all about this program, I titled this thread DxO Viewpoint 4... It is actually Viewpoint 2!!

I guess I'll see much better results on some different types of shot. ATM, I'm trying to get a "feel" for this, before I truly trust it to deliver the results I want.

I've just acquired this program, and thought I'd give it a quick bash.

Here's the original image:




..and here it is again, with the back wall running at true vertical (as opposed to leaning in due to lens distortion):




The difference is quite subtle, so I think it will be a useful tool for me when it comes to "ruined" architecture shots, caused by converging verticals.

Yeah - there's a bit too much on the magenta tones.. And, yeah - the foreground could be cropped slightly (take a wee bit of the RHS out too).. But, hey!!.. That would be blown up to a decent-sized poster, and with a nice frame, that would be up on my lounge wall taking pride of place!! Now, go grab your camera and take a few more like this!!

Taffy - DHL's training video was compiled mainly from cctv footage from various sources. The forklift incident happened at their own hub in Dubai, I'm told. The unmarked pallet incident was taken from an airside security camera on the adjacent stand to the aircraft being loaded.

In the airline business, the watchword is "if it presents no risk - it's safe to fly. If it presents a risk, however slight - treat it with caution."

When you get on your plane, whether it's to/from London / Manchester, or to/from London / Hong Kong you want to be totally reassured that everything on board has been checked and re-checked. Having said that, the main-man of the flight deck has the final say on what goes in the hold of his plane.

Cast your mind back a few years, when we had the horror stories of Sony laptops "spontaneously combusting". This was identified as being caused by a faulty weld of the battery casing. Lithium readily oxidises rather violently with air, and God help you if you drop a faulty lithium battery into water!!

Unfortunately, the cargo operators (I got my training through DHL) will not release their safety training dvd's to the general public, but the one we were shown shows one incident where a passenger was sitting in the airport with his laptop on his knee when it burst into flames! Another clip showed a fork-lift driver accidentally driving over a laptop (in its original packaging) that had fallen off a pallet, and moments later caused a small fire. Yet another showed a pallet parked airside next to a cargo jet which did not have any markings to identify the freight, which turned out to be a consignment of lithium batteries which, due to the fact that another heavier load was sat on top of them, had caused damage to the cartons of batteries, causing them to spontaneously combust. Matters were made much worse when the fire crews tried to douse the fire with water. I reckon they would have felt much safer running between crossfire from the allied soldiers and the Taliban!!

Edit: I found a link to a You Tube video which demonstrates the reaction of a damaged laptop battery. Imagine the consequences of this happening at 35,000 ft over the Atlantic, and you will understand why they are now being tightly regulated.