Excellent set Nigel as already said. My favourite is No.5 as well.

regards

Karlo

Looks good to me.

They work for me...really like them. Keep saying I must try a bit of this ICM in particular.

regards

Karlo

Very good shots...5,8 and 10 my favourites.

regards

Karlo

Very nice...quite hefty at 925g body but i'm sure the early adopters will be able to afford a few new shirts in a larger collar size!

I'll probably pick up one in about 2 years when its due to be replaced..by then the price should have dropped to below £1000!

Price is rumoured to be 1999 Euros which at todays rate is about £1550-£1600 body only. 'Standard' kit lens is a 28-105 according to photorumors.com.

Nice set Mike, I particularly like No.4.

That lens is very underrated in my opinion and is great value at the £139 or so that SRS are asking for it.

regards

Karlo

Personally I think that the symmetry in No's 1 and 3 is too perfect...daft as that might sound. Great colours in No.1 but it almost looks like an inflamed, swollen blood vessel about to rupture.

No.3 ...my eyes are just totally confused by the image...there is too much going on and the pattern is too regular for me...saved a bit by the figure ...but even then it is dead centre which doesn't help as much as it would if it was off centre like Phil suggested.

No.2 is probably my favourite...I'd probably leave it as it is or if you wanted the flag symmetry with this one trim a bit of the bottom so that the bottom water was the same width as the top sky.

Just some personal preferences really. Had i taken any of those images i'd probably have been quite pleased with them overall.

Karlo

I appreciate that the 300mm DA F4 with or without the 1.4 converter is a great lens and for birding/wildlife when you will usually be shooting at max focal length anyway it's ideal but Its not a zoom for flexibility. Even the lower end of the 150-450 is too long sometimes particularly when shooting aircraft at airshows, aerobatic teams where you often need something as wide as 80/90mm.

When Pentax initially announced the existence of a long zoom on their roadmap it was looking like it may have been 100-400 or thereabouts which I think would have been a better commercial decision. Whether it was co-incidence or not Sigma seemed to discontinue the 120-400 around the same time. When the lens actually appeared and was a 150-450 premium grade (£2K) I was actually disappointed as it didn't really fill the gap I was looking at...had Sigma held on for a bit longer they would in my opinion have done very well with the 120-400.

Whilst other manufacturers still had offerings in the segment i'm discussing, it didn't really matter that Pentax wasn't present there, but now that everyone else is vacating that gap I think if Pentax don't plug it they will lose future customers who are coming to DSLRs for the first time and risk losing existing customers who can't find their needs met beyond 300mm.

It's not an immediate priority for me and probably won't be an issue for a year or so but I suspect that FF will now occupy Pentax's combined marketing/manufacturing capacity for the foreseeable future and that APS-C will become the Cinderella and be largely ignored bar the odd HD update of existing lenses.

Years ago any lens that included 400mm in its repertoire was quite a rarity, was usually very expensive and out of the reach of all but professionals or well heeled enthusiasts...but today they are far more common and used by all strata of society. Manufacturing costs must have plummeted due to the increased use of plastic lenses, computer aided design, mechanized polishing, globalisation and not least an ever increasing population with higher disposable incomes so the barriers to entry of this market segment have never been lower.