Hi folks - I'm still alive, just been busy with "real world" stuff as well as in a total scanning frenzy. My Nikon Coolscan had been sitting idle for many months and between finally getting a good workflow and and having a good amount of hard drive space (each scan is ~100 megs!), I have been scanning like a madman. It helps that I've been going through my grandfather's old slides - most of the stuff I've been scanning so far has been from 1946-1959! It's fun seeing my father as a little boy.
Of course, there are thousands of slides to go through... so that's what I've been mostly working on whenever I have anything like spare time. I assume that I'll find more time for Disboards as my June trip approaches.
First - regarding shooting "M" lenses - once you set "aperture ring" to "permitted" in the Custom menu, all you need to do is shoot in "M" mode and press the green button to meter. The green button will only meter in "M" mode, I believe - it will not work in P, Tv, Av, and I am pretty sure it won't in the others, either. Once you've done that, you should be good unless the light changes. If you want to get really tricky, it is possible to modify the lens so that the aperture changes as you turn the ring - which is how M42 lenses (when the lens is set to "M") behave - this is nice because then you can just shoot in Av mode and it meters like any other lens.
Gianna'sPapa, have you had a chance to use any of the Pentax lenses with SDM? I'm curious how Sigma's HSM compares - I haven't really heard any comparisons.
RBennett - congratulations! Your wife is a keeper.
My wife also went from the K100D to the K-x and it's quite an upgrade - she was bummed when I showed her yesterday that more colors are coming to the US; she really wanted the purple one but it wasn't available at the time and now it will be. Oh well, next time we upgrade her...
Welcome littlekidagain! You'll have a great time with your Pentax at Disney.
As for me... well, my gear is in my signature. It's mostly complete, there's nothing significant lens-wise missing, though it doesn't link accessories. I had been hoping to pick up a Pentax Limited 77mm F1.8 before the next trip, but there's two things keeping that from happening at this point... 1) for reasons too complicated to go into here, I upgrade the fronts, center, and sub in my home theater so that chewed up my "fun money" for a while, and 2) I'm waiting to see the reviews on Sigma's upcoming 85mm F1.4.
You can see what I take with me in the 1/10 "live TR" link in my signature, and there are tons of actual photos from the trip in the "full TR". Here's my baby, though:
...and here's the happy couple:
She just upgraded me from the Pentax K100D to the K-x!!!! And so now, that brings my gear list to:
