I got copies made of my favourite teaching slides because they started to fade. Now I have them all scanned and in powerpoint. The amount of time I used to spend sorting 35mm slides in and out of magazines for lectures seems incredible now. Getting all my lectures in powerpoint was a right royal pain at the time, but in the long run has saved me many hours of sorting. Now I just project slides for fun. Nothing quite like a Kodachrome 25 ASA slide on a big screen!

Cheers, Kris.

More basic on mine. Part of the flange that holds the lens hood on has cracked and is dangling off. Minor cosmetic thing really but I thought I would get it done before the warranty runs out.

Cheers, Kris.

Welcome to the gang and enjoy your kit (and the wonderful world of LBA).

Go on hefty, complete your set of silver FA Ltds... After all, George L has one so it must be good

I have yet to get a Ltd. Thinking about getting the 43 first.

Cheers, Kris.

Impossible to test for this photo now of course, but given that the depth of field at 12mm is enormous at any aperture you could happily follow hefty's advice and use f5.6 for maximum sharpness and maximum shutter speed.

I had nasty soft images from my beloved 50-135mm lens at an American football game recently. The contrast was so low from the back of the stands to the pitch that it had trouble getting a focus lock. Modern AF lenses will focus beyond infinity so just sticking it on manual and turning it all the way to the end doesn't work either. I had more luck with my M 200 F4. I kept wishing I had Richard's f2.8 A* 300mm and converters but I am not sure the stadium guards would have let me in with that monster.

Cheers, Kris.

This made me think "for the love of God, why?" Surely fitting a three way switch instead of two is no more expensive? The only explanation must be deliberately creating reasons to buy a K20.

It reminds me of the SP500 and the SP1000. The latter had a top shutter speed of 1/1000, the former 1/500 until one realised that the SP500 also had a 1/1000 shutter speed, it just wasn't marked. You just had to click the dial past the notional 1/500 top speed!

Oh well.

Cheers, Kris.

1) I assume you have the "allow aperture ring" (or whatever it is called) in the menus set to yes, otherwise everything shoots wide open.

2) Fit the lens with the camera turned off, and then when you turn it on the camera will ask for the focal length for the SR system.

3) Focus is a bit of a pain because the K10/K20 has (a) such a small viewfinder image compared to older film cameras and (b) none of the traditional focus devices like a split screen. You can buy third party split screens for the K10/20. Katzeye has a good reputation but is expensive. You can use the green focus confirmation hexagon at to check that the centre spot is in focus. One big bonus is the lens has depth of field marks so if you can set the aperture to allow for ageing eyes (mine that is!)

4) Exposure. Set to manual. Press green button to get a rough exposure value. Either take a picture, check the histogram and adjust exposure manually, or if you have the digital preview set (this is how the K10 does it anyway) take a preview image, check the histogram and adjust.

HTH.

Best wishes, Kris.

Boo hiss....

I saw a review of the Tokina 12-24mm zoom. Is this just a variant of the Pentax lens? The 'change to manual focus' is different (pull the focusing ring towards you) but it is an constant F4. No cheaper than the Pentax one though.

Cheers, Kris.

No! I have the opposite problem. I never log out, I just quit Firefox or navigate to another page. Half the messages I have already read come back with green squares, but older messages I have missed are not always marked. I find the whole read/unread thing highly unreliable.

Best wishes, Kris.

My old Kodachrome slides are still pretty damn good (they go back to 1982) but the "Boots" slide films fade. By the way gartmore, don't bin those slides. Our photographer has quite some success scanning old slides and restoring the colour in PS. His biggest success was scanning a set of slides which had been developed accidentally as print films and restoring those to close to what they should be.

Cheers, Kris.