WOW, is that the price that they go for nowadays>
Geez, thank you so much Shim, for that goodie, , I have been making excellent use of it

If you think that price is going to remain still for weeks to come then think again. If I were you and had decided that its the K20D that should be my option then I would hurry. Yesterday Chris categorically said prices for K20D were going to be £650

How far are the feeders from the location you are trying to shoot them PentaxBabe?

Danny, you lucky bugger
how did you manage this?

This is really great, I think its in great hands for some fantastic reviews.
Go wild with it, you seem to have the perfect set of lenses to put it to a good spin. Let's hear it all.

Ohhhh, now I realise why you said that I would be seeing you sooner than I thought, when I was leaving from SRS and said bye to you. Is that what you were trying to imply? Did you already know that you were getting the K-7 at that time?

Stefan,
Yes that's correct about the two sensors. Heard the pentax guy trying to explain something about the sensors and focusing to Danny when asked why it is faster at focusing. But then Danny told him that apart from that this couldn't explain why it was so fast at moving the lens itself compared to the K20D. Well, too high stuff for my boggling mind to grasp it all besides I think the pentax guy also was none the wiser about it all, specially after he went "GOSH" and danny said, precisely, that's GOSH, its the term one gets once has the chance to compare one and the other straightaway, focusing closer and longer with K20 and immediately holding the K-7 and doing the same.

And don't even get me started on the speed of the continuous shooting. D300 owners who rate this as a very high feature, if you handle the K-7 and try the continuous mode you are on for a huge surprise. The speed is just phenomenal.

Mike
Yes Danny had his sigma with him. Didn't try the screw drive lens but reading another link from the chap in Singapore he categorically says that the screw drive lens also becomes speedier focusing.

And talking about prices going up? Let me tell you what Chris confirmed to me. That K20D price is going to be £650 very very soon.

This I got confirmation from him when I mentioned the fact that the price of K-7 was more than double the price of K20D, calculating it as £500 as I remmebered, but immediately he said, that the K20D is going to be £650 so its going to be all readjusted.

Mike, the only thing I can't confirm about the fantastic features of the K-7 is the image quality of course, I won't even touch it because I dont have experience to judge it nor I think there was an oportunity to check this, but I think its taken for granted, and this also confirmed by all the reviews that its really good.

What I can really tell you is that the features we touched, including the fantastic LCD display and the Live view, I can assure you Mike that you will want one.

Just back from SRS. Ran into Danny and Mark which was nice to get to meet them.
Danny had brought all his lenses and we got to play with it for over an hour. And we did some comparision also side by side with the K20 and I must say "WOW", and Danny will confirm this.

There are quite a few features that are so amazing that it can only be poetically described.

Piotro, you mention about the DA*60-250mm lens attached to it as being "fine". For me it really felt like a world of difference, focusing wise. Danny was the one who called my attention to this and I think I will leave it to him to explain better how fast and great compared to the K20 attached this lens works when moving the lens itself locking into focus.
In simple words its like that feeling one has when first time one tries the SDM feature when is just used to the normal focus? This is one notch up with the same difference. Absolutely amazing how it goes so fast and locks quick.
Danny noticed this and went and got his K20 attached the lens and gave it to the pentax guy and asked him to try to focus near and then far and vice versa and he tried with the K20 and then got the K-7 in his hands and the moment he tried it he turned to Danny and said "GOSH".

So even he wasn't aware of this fact and then the small group started wondering why it was so quick with the K-7 compared to the K20. Stripped the battery speculating that may be the battery was more powerful than the K20 one, but then concluded it wasn't. It wasn't just the quick focusing lock but the movement of the lens itself that was so quick that when you are looking through the viewfinder it has that impression that its absolutely fast moving up down and then locking.

And I can't even begin to tell you how soft the shutter release sound is. You could literally be standing next to it and it sounds like just a small rubber ball thumb on a well cushioned solid wooden plank. Very very dampened. Remember a few weeks ago when I started a thread after returning from the hide where there was a Nikon guy and a canon guy and when we all released the shutters I started wondering if the sound of my shutter was so loud because it was echoing from the support of the wood. But in fact it wasnt, it was just because compared to the other cameras it sounded like a drum beating. Well, let me tell you this. The K-7 beats the D90 and the D80 and dont know which canon was the other guy using, but certainly I have still very vivid those moments in my memory so I know for sure the K-7 is smoother and quieter than this.

Is this enough for now?
There are some more I could go on,

By the way Mike, the kit lens is the WR model if I heard correctly Chris saying this. And it will add up £30 to the price of the body when bought together.

Oh and Stefan, you were right when you said that when I handled the K-7 I would want one . Spot on, you were absolutely right.

I notice you used MATRIX metering mode. That would affect wrongly the metering also because you are getting alot of light reflected from the white surface.
In this case I would definitely have used SPOT METERING.

Again please seek advice from the veteran members here , they know best

Try using manual focusing and then see the difference.

One method of practising your AF and MF is this:

push the focus lever to MF and then focus manually, then keep steady, do not move and with your left hand reach the tab again and lift it to either AF.C or AF.S ( I find AF.S better for this exercise) and then gently push the shutter release button slowly only to allow the camera to autofocus.
Keep your eye on the viewfinder and notice if the focus moves. If it moves check if its just trying to lock into a different area (this could be just because it has found another patch with higher contrast to lock in) or it remains exactly in the same position and you hear the bleep (which means it has achieved focus).

Once you start doing it you will build your confidence into your manual focusing and will learn which is the sweet spot.

On the pictures above I think there is a glitch there somewhere. Did you have your focus lever on AF.C or AF.S?
If you had it on AF.C and the spider was moving even very very slowly, due to the physical distance you were from it you are bound to have an out of focus spider. At certain close physical distance even the spider's body vibration which might not be detectable by the naked eye could influence your result. In fact that could have been the case as the legs might have stayed still on the tub and the body has that minute shake which all living things have and that would be enough to throw your image out of focus.
I have read that for close focusing images even for people the the human skin which breaths and never stays still in microscopic terms is enough to throw the focus out of the window depending upon your focusing requirements this is enough to show a blur, or better less than a perfect focus on the person.

Hope this helps.
But hey, I am still in the learning category and a novice (well I have been kindly told by some respected members here that I should consider myself an improver rather than a novice, which is quite a boost for my ego ha ,so may be one of the more experienced and knowledgeable ones might have a different view on your images.

Thanks

Amin

Dan, you are right, I need to do something about my shed.
But reflection is the least I am worried about actually. These shots were just experimental, I can control the reflections in other ways. I was trying this just to coordinate the images and put the bubbles and smoke together and also trying to get the whole bubble into the image .
If you check my previous images none of them had the full bubble, and this is the first time I managed to do it . that was the whole purpose of today's experiments. I have got a way of avoiding reflections, its just it takes a bit of work and conditions which at the moment I don't have in my shed. As you can see its a whole junkyard there .
And also I am making do with bits and pieces not proper equipment that I need to. So the reflection part is something I have just managed to grasp a little. This time I was more concentrating on the full bubble, which I am quite happy I got it, and now I can perfect it

Thanks for your comment, and in fact about painting black its something I didn't know so will look into that. Thanks for that

Amin