Can manufacturers sustain a price hike if sales take a dip? I appreciate the reasons for this and its understandable at the pro end of the market but when you get say a lens like the 10-20mm sigma hike up say from £300 to £400 then people like me saving up for such things are simply not going to buy it.

Time will tell I guess, maybe Chris can tell us how sales are going in a few months after all these price hikes.

40

and would not be on this forum otherwise as the K10D was a 40th gift from the whole family.

so in a photographic sense life has begun at 40, although I used to enjoy the results from my espio 200.

thanks for responses. When I scrutinise the best pictures, the ones i like the most from snapfish/dscolourlabs it's noticable how much sharper and detailed images are compared to what i am seeing on screen. does anyone know why this would be? is this down to my screen or the development method they have used. I must say I prefer the end result to the original, the photos have more vibrancy than what I see on screen.

I've no idea what the global market is like for Pentax, but here in the UK you've got to dig a bit and research before you buy to really appreciate what is available. The K20D has picked up lots of favourable reviews lately and the forum here seems to have new people all the time at the moment. So it might not be so bad for Pentax, but in the current climate lots of surprising things have happened.

Does anyone know how Pentax are faring on the global side of things, as we must be quite a small market here in the UK.

As people have said above to me it's Jessops who look a bit more shaky. It can only truly work as a shop with an emphasis on the quality of service and advice, but my impression is they've tried to save costs on the staffing side, and they will pay for that. It makes them no different to buying a camera from Dixons or Comet.

this is timely. I have just got my first dust spot in my k10d, only noticable when you take pics where that part of the pic is light enough. I'll be trying the dust blower method today when I get a chance. I have the dust shake switched on for when you switch the camera on but its not shifting it.

the Arctic Butterfly thing. If I am reading and understanding right, its a brush with a charge in it that you run over the sensor, when you have put the mirror up?

Interesting point on second hand lenses, I just got one, and might be the reason, but the truth is I'm probably not as vigilant as I could be on lens changing so this is probably a lesson to me!

A report back on DS colour labs. The results are good, about on a par with snapfish. I'd say some look better than the snapfish results, some the same, some not at good, not a great deal between them. There was a little muck up on some of the enlargements, the wrong print has been done, but I am sure they'll sort that out tomorrow.

BTW I do still use Photobox for calendars which are markedly better than the print quality, although I deliberately slightly overbrightened a few images anticipating they may come out too dark, and on the calendar they looked fine.

I have placed an order today with DS colour labs with a number of pictures that I have printed before from snapfish and photobox so I can do a like for like. I'll report back the results. Their postage is quite high at £4 but if the quality stands out it will be worth it.

I think it might help others if on this thread we compare experiences of straight forward sending of the jpg as is to a printer and thoughts on quality.

I am interested in people's experiences. I did some like for like comparison between Photobox and Snapfish, and Snapfish was markedly better. Photobox pictures were too dark, peoples hair was darkened and lacked detail. The same photos from snapfish had nice detail to the hair. Even so I am getting more picky and find that the colours in snapfish prints could be better. I'll give you an example, my daughter has a red school top which looks the right shade of red on screen but from snapfish is not quite right, maybe a bit oversaturated. I know there are places where you can send prints where you save the colour scheem for the printer that they use so you can get closer to what you have on screen. I wondered what peoples experience of that is, in printing big standard prints, I'm not talking expensive stuff.

interesting to hear that jps

Just showed a died in the wool Canon user my photostream. His reaction was and I quote:

"Nice and sharp. Do you use manual focus?"