TTK... get her a DA* 300mm and she'll love it...

I started my photographic "career" at the tender age of 16 with an ME Super. I loved that camera and I still have the dead remains of its body. Years of shooting colour transparencies with it means that I am very good at getting the exposure right with it, and now have (for reasons I wont bore you with) another three of them. When it died, I acquired a second hand MX. Another great camera which was sadly stolen in Paris. Then more recently I got an LX from ebay and once the nice man in Harrow sorted out my sticky mirror (not the usual cause but an electronic one) I was very happy. The Program and Super A also seemed great cameras. I have never been enamoured with the models that came later, they all seemed a bit "plasticky" although I'll admit I haven't looked at every single one.

When it came to buying a digital SLR once the prices came down to something I could afford I wasn't too impressed with Pentax's offerings but I had been a Pentax user all my life. I was girding my loins to buy a Canon. Then, just in time, out came the K10D. The reviews were impressed, I was impressed, I bought one, I love it. My impression is that Pentax have lost market share compared to the mid 80s and the days of the ME Super. Most shops I visit don't carry any Pentax stock! If they want to reclaim their position they need to keep producing quality cameras that catch people's eyes in a range of model levels, from beginners "one up from a point-and-shoot" to the semi-pro/good amateur K10, K20 etc. I am not in the market for a new body, I'll be spending my money on new glass (another DA* lens) but I do want Pentax to do well and keep producing excellent kit.

If I had one wish, it would be for a tilt/shift lens...

Cheers, Kris.

If you are going to have your tripod with you (which would be a very good idea) also consider bracketing photographs of scenes with a wide dynamic range and processing them in one of the HDR packages that are about. You can get quite surreal effects, although I prefer a more realistic end product.

Have fun!

Best wishes, Kris.

I have a widescreen laptop and use it for teaching. None of the data projectors I have used (quite a few!) support the widescreen format and are generally of lower resolution than my laptop screen. Powerpoint also assumes the projected image is the normal screen ratio.

Best wishes, Kris.

I guessed that would be the general advice, although I don't think spending a fiver on a used lens is in the same league to spending over 500 quid on a 77mm Ltd! (price from SRS). My next expensive lens is going to be the DA* 16-50mm to go with my DA* 50-135mm (which I love).

Many thanks, BTW, for the web link. Extremely useful information.

2nd BTW... how do you find the K-135-600mm? I read some reviews of it but have never seen one second hand.

Best wishes, Kris.

I have my eye on a smc-M 85mm F2 lens but the seller says "but one of the inner elements is slightly cloudy. This will probably clean if the lens is dismantled." I am guessing this is probably fungus. Does anyone know how much it would cost to get it cleaned? (and any recommendations as to who?), or is it something one could attempt oneself? (I would be extremely reticent to do so as I have the manual dexterity of a fish).

Many thanks, Kris.

The 1.4 lens sells very well and probably accounts for the higher price. I created a database of sales of Pentax film SLR kit on ebay which I haven't added to for a while but does give and idea of how much things can go for. For the Spotmatic II, I have 11 listings ranging from 17 pounds to 205 pounds with an average of 65 pounds.

Best wishes, Kris.

Hi.

Quite some time back I was photographing inscriptions with a flash on a long cable and a TLR. Now, I want to do the same thing and thought that I could use my K10D and my AF360. Unfortunately the flash manual was written pre-K10 and the flash section of the K10 manual is more opaque than usual. Anyway, I had a go. I set the AF360 to manual and slave mode, and turned down the flash on the K10 to -2EV as I only wanted it to trigger the main flash, not actually do much filling in. It worked, sort of. I seem to be having a synch issue in that quite often the main flash would fire but clearly not in synch with the main camera. I tried so many variations of flash settings, settings on the camera and modes that I cannot now remember what worked and what didn't apart from that sometimes when I went from one tombstone to the next it would stop working, again. Any suggestions as to the best combination of camera mode, flash settings (on and off camera) etc would be welcome.

BTW, my old single contact flash cable wont fire any flashgun remotely (Pentax or otherwise) whereas (dare I say it?) a Canon camera will. Any idea if I can bully the K10 into firing a flash without investing in the proper Pentax cables?

Many thanks, Kris.

I use mine for all sorts of things, picking one is very misleading.