Agreed - and tis why I put pixel(s) with a bracket round it!

Probably a whole row is affected, but the dark ones might be because one (or a few) are draining all the current from the row. Who can tell?

Might still be worth a punt, though... it's dead-and-paid-for camera, otherwise, innit?

Excellent shots, all three. Hard to pick a favourite. Compositionally, the second one has it - nicely defocussed background, good foreground interest and contrasts in colours of the flower and stone, and a good pose.

However, I think the third one is my preferred choice - for the same reason that WobblyGoblin stated - the turnaround, over-the-shoulder pose makes it very much more interesting than a 'normal' shot (if there is such a thing).

And is it just me, or are other people hearing the incessant words "Alan, Alan, Alan, ALAN? Oh... it's not Alan.... Steve, Steve, STEVE!" as they look at these? That d**ned TV program has ruined wildlife shots for me now!

Random long shot, here (I concede I have no experience of the GX20/K20D or its sensor), but is this basically a "stuck pixel" issue?

If so, when Philstaff gets the Samsung back, is it perhaps worth trying some of the (allegedly folklore) tricks cited on Wikipedia to try and 'unstick' the pixel(s)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_pixel - scroll down to the section headed "Stuck versus dead pixels".

My apologies if these are all a total waste of time, but once you've got the credit note in your hand, it'd seem worth a try, wouldn't it? Nothing finer in the world than getting a refund and then fixing the junk yourself, is there?

Pah! You should try living round these parts... *every* bl**dy tourist seems to have a lens-hood on, these days!

Noooo. Don't say that! I do it all the time... it's the only thing I've got left that distinguishes me from the bl**dy tourists!

I'm still making my mind up on that score... on bright sunny days, I'd agree without hesitation... but on dull overcast days, I've really not noticed that much difference, tbh. I'm quite prepared to admit that I've not given the testing a long enough time (I only got the hoods last week), and I've not exactly been scientific... but so far, I'm not convinced.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the 'wannabe lookylike pro' tourist who wanders round in the grey gloom with his petal hood on, and his inbuilt flash up and firing (trying to illuminate Pulteney Bridge in broad daylight from 500ft away), is *the* classic DSLR tourist stereotype of the 21st Century. Fill-flash? My backside!

Next to that, I am happy to be quick-swapping lenses in one hand, with the hoods on backwards, photographing (you've guessed it) the tourists themselves. They're my wildlife, round 'ere, y'see!

At the risk of seeming rather 'on-topic', I'd like to add my vote of confidence to the JJC LH-RBG hood for the DAL 55-300mm. I took a punt (albeit with a different Ebay seller in HK), and paid £8.99, and got the hood (and a petal one for my kit DAL 18-55mm lens too, also £8.99) within 5 days.

They both fit perfectly, and there's a reassuring 'click' when they're locked into place, and of course, they also stow properly 'wrong-way round' too. I was pleasantly surprised.

To my mind, even £8.99 for a bit of injection-moulded ABS plastic is steep (given how much plastic is given to me for free everytime I go to Tescos and buy, er, practically anything! ) - but it's a helluva lot less ridiculous a price than what Pentax is charging for hoods. Hate to say it, but there is (in my opinion) absolutely nothing to be gained by paying full monty for a Pentax original... unless perhaps it's scratch-and-sniff and smells of roses.

As for the DA vs DAL comparison, which I'm sure is totally valid, in terms of the absence of a quick-focus, I think (for me) it's a case of two riders: First, I don't miss what I've not had, so it's no loss. Second, although Chris is totally right - an autohunt the wrong way is a major PITA - I've found that I can very quickly flick into MF, spin the focus manually to the long end, then flick it back into AF, and usually it behaves. Yes, it helps having hands the size of a gorilla, but they don't call me BigJacko for nothing!

The other trick I've found useful sometimes is to set centre spot focus, and track/pan like a biatch, and hope for the best. I've found that using 5 or 11 point AF can lock on to buildings or other random background cack (or worse, the back of some other spectator's head, which really causes the lens to hunt up close) - and although a single-spot focus means some careful planning (and panning) ahead of the shot, it works for me. Sometimes!

For the money, I'm happy with my DAL for the time being. Compared to my old fully-manual Tokina 80-200, it's a flippin' joy! But obviously, if I had money to burn, yes, I'd like the DA 55-300mm instead - but it's a trade-off, innit? Tbh, I'd probably take that cash and put it towards the DA 10-17mm fisheye that I want to fill the end-gap in my range!

I will confess I have lately started eyeballing Canonistas and quietly mumbling "more features, less cost" under my breath as a kind of mantra, before sidling away, grinning. Round here, they're usually foreign tourists anyway, so wouldn't understand a word I was saying even if they were sharp enough to catch what I was saying.

And I will also confess that every time I see a fellow Pentaxian (again usually a foreign tourist) I will take a couple of candid shots for my library. They are rarer than three-legged swans, round here, it seems!

If that all conspires to make me a snob, then so be it. Guilty as charged!

I'm probably in a class of one here, but to me, photography is about whatever the photographer was aiming to do, and whether he achieved it or not!

That, and beauty being in the eye of the beholder, but as we know, no two beholders have the same 'eye'.

The thing I love about photography is, nobody's ever wholly right about anything. It's all so beautifully subjective, and even the hardest of the hard-and-fast rules are nothing more than jelly... if the subject or the treatment dictate otherwise.

In your case, I'd agree it's a more 'pleasing' image, artistically-speaking. In Davex's case, it's more realistic.

Which is right, and which is photography really about? Hmm, let me think...

Ok... got it... please select your answer from:

(a) Thursday, but I'll have to get it up on the ramps first and have a look.

(b) It's in the post, I promise.

(c) I was just cleaning it and it went off, officer.

One of those is bound to be right.

Probably...

I recently tried to get some shots of leafcutter ants at Longleat (with a Kodak compact - before I had my Pentax K-x), so I know how impossible these little fellas are to shoot well. Drove me nuts, and I don't think I stood a chance.

However, I think your shot is great. The DOF is almost spot-on (if I was going to be hyper-critical, I'd have loved it more if the two ants in the very centre were slightly sharper too, but that really would've been a miracle). But otherwise, it's sharp in all the right places, nicely composed, and the defocussed green part of the background is the perfect setting for the 'action' part.

Can I ask one question of the other reviewers though, please? Forgive my inexperience, but where exactly is the bokeh you're referring to? I can't see it! I'm probably looking at the wrong place or for the wrong thing, but I thought bokeh were blurred artifacts which hinted at the shape of the aperture itself - points of light, rather than just blur per se. I know bokeh means blur in Japanese, but understood it was more like:




Not trying to be controversial - just genuinely interested in understanding what is really meant by bokeh, and confirming (or not) the photo bibles that have formed the basis of my limited experience of it so far. (and if this constitutes a thread hijack, SnappyChappy, please feel free to say so, and I'll take it to a new thread! )

{throws caution to the winds} I'm going to say I prefer the first. I know that 'impact-wise' Jon and SnappyChappy's reworks have more 'gusto', but, having been to Iceland, I've gotta say, they're both wrong! They make the scene look like something 'British Countryside' - especially Jon's, which is very green-fields and sun breaking through the clouds.

But for me, the single most undeniable thing about Iceland, was how bleak it was. The whole island is like the surface of the flippin' moon! It's a cross between a volcanic hell and a low-contrast ashen slagheap spread liberally across a rocky outcrop - with a fair few other-worldly glaciers and hot-water and steam geysers adding the general feeling of being on a different planet!

And for those reasons, I think the existing colours in Dave's original are right. Perhaps the contrast could be increased a touch, but not too much, really. Iceland is grungily grey, for the most part! To the extent where this might've actually been better done in monochrome, and some brightening done only on the two geysers in the shot, leaving the rest as, effectively, a 'moon shot'.

Sorry to buck the trend - I do fully accept that Jon's version is a 'better photo', in the classic sense, but for me, it's less 'real'. If I didn't know this was Iceland (am I right in thinking this is at or near the Blue Lagoon, btw?) then Jon's would've been fine - but alas, I do. And I recommend a trip there, for anyone interested... it really is the closest landscape you'll ever find on Earth, to being 'outer space!'

I would like to recommend Bath Photo Optics (www.bathphotooptics.co.uk) (formerly Walters of Bath), who have been extremely helpful, attentive, and competitively priced on all the stuff I've bought from them recently, and in the past.

They're a Pentax dealer, but consistently seem able to beat Bath's only other Pentax dealer's prices (mentioning no names, but you know which three-letter acronym nationwide chain-store this is, I'm sure! ).

Most importantly, their advice is second-to-none, I reckon. Peter (the owner) saved me, in the nick of time, from basically dumping all my old Pentax lenses, and turned me on to the K-x, which I'd never heard of till then. I shall forever be in his debt. To think I'd have just been a lowly, run-of-the-mill Canon 450D owner, without his sound advice! And my old K-mount lenses would probably be in the bin, instead of getting a new lease of life, and escaping from my old camera bag after a suffocating ten years or so, hidden in there, forgotten!

They're a classic example of a 'Quality Local Independent', and I am very happy to go out of my way to put business their way, and sincerely hope they keep going for a very, very long time!