Lens Hood question

First, make sure you're trying to turn the half closest to the lens. Polarizer filters are designed to turn freely; one half screws onto the lens and then the other half turns free.

Second, don't force it. If you think something's about to break, STOP!

If you can't unscrew the half closest to the lens, try putting a rubber band on it. Wrap the rubber band around that portion of the filter to give you a better grip, then try turning it.

If you have a jar opener, try using that.

A good camera store will sell filter wrenches. One of them should be able to remove the filter. Or take your lens to the store and have someone there remove it with their filter wrench.

The filter goes into the slot in the holder closest to the lens. You can then use the toothed edge to rotate the filter, just as you used to turn your old polarizing filter. It can be a little stiff, but it will turn.

The polarizer filter is comprised of two rings. One screws into the threads on the front of the lens and the other turns freely. Look at the filter closely, then grasp the ring closest to the lens and turn that one counterclockwise to unscrew it from the lens. If it's on too tight or you can't get a good grip on it, try wrapping a rubber band around it.

The lens error is due to failure of the lens control system. You can remove battery and card replace battery and while switching on tap the lens hood on your hands so as to disengage any dirt or mechanism being struck.
Use some air to blow between the lens to dislodge any sand particles struck inside. If none of these works then you can think of taking consensus with the service centre as it canbe failure of the control/drive unit.
get estimate before you decide. It will be good to have it checked at the Pentax service as you do not have to run around for spares.

Hi there, together with providing you the solution to the problem, I also took the liberty of going one step further in giving you steps on how to remove the headlight bulb.

• Find the hood release handle and activate it, the hood should pop open.
• Once the hood is popped open locate the hood secondary or safety latch and release it. Then finish opening the hood.
• Locate and remove mounting clips for any plastic shields that cover the headlight lens mounting screws or clips.
• Some headlight bulbs can be replaced by simply grasping the bulb socket behind the headlight lens and turn it counter clockwise to remove it. This will expose the headlight bulb.
• If the headlight bulb socket is not accessible the headlight lens may need to be remove or obstructions behind the bulb removed to gain access to the headlight bulb socket.
• To remove the headlight lens remove all mounting screws and clips that hold the headlight lens in place.
• After the headlight housing has been removed from it's mounts, release the headlight bulb from the headlight lens housing (turn counter clockwise) the bulb will then come out of the headlight assembly. Once removed, visually verify that the replacement bulb is exactly the same as the failed bulb before to ensure a proper repair.
• Clean the headlight lens free from all debris to help maintain the seal from the bulb to the lens. This will keep moisture out of the lens.
• Install the new headlight bulb by turning the retainer ring or bulb clockwise.
• Re-install the headlight lens housing and reinstall electrical connector.
• Re-install plastic covers.

After the job is complete turn the ignition key to the "on" position and activate the headlight switch. Observe the newly replaced headlight bulb to ensure proper operation.

Glad to be of help!!!

Assuming the filter is of the right size, it screws into the thread mounting on the inside of the front rim of the lens.

Depending on the particular hood, it either fits into the bayonet mount on the outside of the front rim of the lens or simply slips on.

If you're using a step-up ring to mount larger filters or using a Cokin-type filter, then you'll need a new hood to accommodate.

Okay, I think you're seeing the shadow of filter stack. If you put a lot of filters on the lens, you're in effect shrinking the field of view. Do enough of this and you'll lose the corners. Imagine holding a roll of toilet paper in front of the lens so you're seeing just a little round picture through the core. This won't matter at the longer focal lengths because you're only using the center of the image anyway, but it will become more pronounced as the focal length decreases.

The easy solution for now is to remove the skylight when using the polarizer. If you absolutely need to use two or more filters, then consider using larger filters with a step-up ring. You might also want to consider somthing like Cokin filters ( http://cokin.com/ ).

Or use an off-camera flash.

This is called "vignetting". To me it sounds like your lens hood isn't mounted correctly. If you don't turn it on all the way, exactly this will happen, because the longer "leaves" on the hood shadows the edges of the frame.
So, try to turnt the hood all the way on. You might have to use a little bit of force, as the hoods can be hard to turn sometimes.
Hope this helps!
/Chris

Skylight filters don't generally block UV, they change the colour tint optically, which you can do without danger of image degredation in post-processing, so I woudn't really recommend using a skylight filter for digital cameras. I haven't tried a UV filter on my fz10, only my circular polarizer. From what I've heard however, a uv filter may act as lens protection (or use the lens hood), and might in some circumstances reduce haze (rarely), and there are unconfirmed rumours of possibly reducing purple fringing. If anyone could ever confirm this, I might consider one. Otherwise, UV filters also seem peripheral for digital photography. Probably the most important optical filter you can use is a polarizer. This can cut a lot of excess scattered/polarized light and reduce excess contrast, increase sky colour saturation, etc. It's effects are extremely difficult or impossible to get in editing.