I recently sent my 50-200 to Pentax for a long overdue repair as it has just degraded in image quality over time. I sent all the items they needed including an invoice as proof of delivery/purchase. The service centre is now saying that they did not receive the invoice/proof of purchase and want me to pay £80 to have the £150 lens repaired and that does not include shipping. There seems to be no way to get in touch with a real person at Pentax UK to try and find out what happened to the invoice I sent.

What would be the easiest way to sort this out?

Beer down the pub for me...


I'm in Leeds but not for long... Don't know where I could end up in a few months time.

Ok, so it was not raining and it is a really cheesy song. I can see clearly though for the first time ever. I ordered a Spyder3 last night as I really needed to calibrate my screen. I can finally see the correct black and white levels and colour temperature! What a difference this makes to everything I see.

I love the SR sensors that FujiFilm make. We have an old S20Pro which was and is the only compact tu use a sensor with two photosensors per photosite to get an amazing dynamic range. It has an extra 4 stops of highlight information hidden in the RAW file, you can't possibly blow out the highlights with these sensors.

Here is an example:







I really like the lower two panoramas Although the sky is a bit washed out in the lower one, which is odd for an S5.

My kit for such a task would be:


K10D + DA* 16-50 F2.8 + 360 Flash
K20D + DA* 50-135 F2.8 + 360 Flash

K20D with the longer lens as it gives extra reach with a little cropping due to the slightly higher resolution.

Would be better if you had flashes that rotated as well for portrait orientation shots. You many also want to look into a diffuser on each of the flashes.

A direct diffuser for the wide lens so you can still use the wide end of the flash zoom and something like a bubble tube for the tele lens:

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7865

Now all you need is a few good places to stand at the wedding...

Erm... What use would partial weather sealing be? That is the same as no weather sealing. It is like building a tank with armour only on the front. It is only as good as its weakest part. So it might as well have no seals at all and be cheaper.

AKAIK there is no weather sealing on the DA17-70F4

I thought I'd start a thread about diffusers, comertially available and DiY.

If you get a flash you will notice it produces harsh light and shadows which can be very unflattering to your subject and anso cause distraction. Many people aleviate this using bounce flash and/or diffusers of various types.

You can get:

Reflectors - Does what it says reflects or partially reflects the light from the flash onto the subject.

Diffusers - light passes through to be spread out over a larger area, also reduces intensity and can change colour balance.



I've been most impressed with the results I've seen from the Lightsphere and similar diffusers. Problem is they are expensive and hard to come by in the UK.

From an other thread:

My girlfriend's uncle has both the soft and the clear lightsphere and swears by them. I have been looking at them for a while and just came up with a replacement that works just as well and costs about 2p.

I have been very pleased using the Gary Fong Lightspheres when I've borrowed them but I can't spend £50 on a cast piece of transparent plastic.

What you need:

Elastic Band
Bubble Wrap
Glue

Make a cylinder out of the bubble wrap and glue it together. Leave it to dry for a few minutes. Slide the elastic band over the top of the flash then place the now dry bubble cylinder over the top of the flash which has been rotated to the same 90 degree angle Gary Fong recommends. Move the elastic band over the cylinder and hey presto, lightsphere equivalent for 2p!

Sounds like Blue Peter...

Here is one I made earlier:




The great thing about this is you can also build a whole range of accessories go with it just as cheaply

PS. The contraption I made is very tall but you can roll it down to change the hight and how it diffuses the light.



Please feel free to discuss and contribute with your own ideas

PTLens is one thing you could try, otherwise you can manually reshape the picture in CS2 to get the right perspective.

Well, it is not squeaking anymore and it was not the AF lever as that was the first thing I checked.

We'll see how it holds up. Over at DPreview a Nikon user had a similar problem with an SWM lens a few years back and it was the micromotor failing.

I guess, but it was very strange that it stopped functioning completely for a while.