Tuesday at the NEC

Well, I did go to the NEC for the show , I also wore the Pentax “base ball” cap, yes I did get one or two funny looks.
But this years “show” was to say the least unimpressive, no where near as good as previous ones.
Loads of bodies milling around, very few good bargains to be had not even any “goody bags” going, Nikon ran out of brochures, I had to get one for a friend, not for me !
The Sigma stand was busy , I wanted to see the 150-500mm.
The usual big ones were Nikon/Canon/Olympus with Epson /Fuji and a couple of others.
If I go next year will depend on if Pentax decide to go.
I feel it is about time for Hoya to spend some money on good camera/lens development and then on advertising, after all they are one of the larger companies in the photographic world.
So Hoya, please don’t let the best and one of the oldest marks down.

As regards "goody bags" I leave all that up to my wife Sue. She is impressive at exhibitions and manages to extract all the things you could imagine, even when they aren't on show. A veritable vacuum cleaner for freebies!

We found lots of interesting things, but then we had a list of things to accomplish. Didn't finish the list, but not too bad.

Well Mike that is a woman thing, extracting blood out of a stone, my wife has been extracting money out of me for years, she has the new car, spends money on dogshows all over the country,we have 6 Irish Setters and one Burmese cat, and I am in the Doghouse all the time
My Dad used to say find yourself a rich widow, but we all know better when youngsters
I did it wrong again

I too went to the 'show' and was disappointed that there was so little about Pentax. Hope for better next year.

I too looked at the Sigma 150-500 but they didn't have one with a Pentax fit. I had to try one with a Canon Camera!!!

I heard that with the K10D using the Sigma 150-500 you have to download additional software/firmware - anyone know anything about this??

I did purchase a sensor cleaner, blower and loupe from Lenspen and watched exactly how to do it on my camera (I had a few spots on the sensor). It's worked well

John

I went Sunday and the Cameraworld stand had several Pentax lenses ex-demo like new at typical ebay used prices...21 DA, 43 Ltd, 70 DA, 77 Ltd 50 D FA macro, new 55/1.4 brand new at £379, 200 DA, 300 DA and others....the other really large impressive stand was the Sony one....the viewfinder of the Sony A900 re-affirmed my thoughts..it was fantastic to look through...FAR FAR better than any of the APS cameras.

Hi John, Check the firmware version on your camera if it is 1.30 it is ok if not go to the Pentax web pages and download the update it has very good instructions on how to do it.
If i can anyone can

Hi Richard - I've checked and I already have version 1.3 so looks as though if I do purchase the Sigma 150-500 there should be no problems.

Thanks

John

Went there on Sunday,looked at other brands...interesting
Hope pentax use this platform/marketing tool next year.

It would be great to see a Pentax stand at Focus next year - perhaps combined with Samsung - to 'half' the costs???