Dan, if you get to play with the new 300mm I'd be interested to hear your comments afterwards on it, e.g. how bright it is through the VF, how the AF feels, etc. I'm hoping it's going to be sharp wide-open but I guess we'll have to wait for some test shots to find out.

Like this?

No PP except for resizing and converting from DNG to JPEG:


http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2307409297/

No PP except for 100% crop on head and converting from DNG to JPEG:


http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2308214742/

No PP except for 100% crop on body and converting from DNG to JPEG:


http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2307409085/

Lastly, after I've mucked it up in PP


http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2308250092/

F/8, 1/250, ISO100, 500mm

EDIT: Just a note on this. The original pictures I posted in this post were processed from RAW to TIFF files before going to JPEG by ACR. Apparently there are issues with the K20D DNG files with ACR where the colours and sharpening can get screwed up, so I've redone them in PPL and will post again below.

You might want to check depressing review as there are a number of side by side shots from people with both cameras. I'm not really into doing that kind of thing myself.

I was in a hide today and someone asked when I was shooting with - "Ooh, a Pentax. You don't see many of those these days." was the response.

OK, here's another from the same day as the Little Egret.

This one is less cropped that the others and I think it shows some nice detail.

I'm finding that I like the noise that I see on the K20D pictures much more. It cleans up easily in PP and what's left is nice and grainy compared to the K10D that could smear a bit (this shows on the bellies of the Snipe in the picture above).

I love taking pictures of Coots (the silly things):


http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2302777206/

Thanks Rae000. I'm waiting for the sun to shine - it makes so much difference with the water birds

B&H got a couple in stock a couple of weeks ago and I snapped one up. I was hoping they'd put their HSM (SDM) into it, but it's still the screw-focus. A bit embarrassing in a hide when it decides to go hunting, but it's a very sharp lens.

Here's another one from today - it was grey and overcast. Normally you can hardly see snipe in amongst reeds because they're so well camouflaged, but this lot were very obliging:

Snipe:


http://flickr.com/photos/chirpy_uk/2299543525/

The lens does weigh a lot, along with the tripod, gimbal mount, camera and binoculars. I don't walk too far with it all, but have bought a backpack to load it into for longer walks.

I'm not intending to lug it and the Tamron 300mm around, something would break - most likely my back

The other half had a pique of madness and allowed me to get a Sigma 500mm f4.5

Sorry George

Thank you for the kind comments

It's not from my bigma

Actually, you're right. In my enthusiasm I didn't mention that the images here are downsized from the crop

The posted images are resized from the crops which are posted on my flickr account (the ones at 1920x1200) in the manner described by Dan, i.e. take the full sized image at 100% magnification and pixel cut out the image (in this case 1920x1200) from the original.

What this then shows you (on the flickr versions at 1920x1200) is the pixel level of detail captured in the digital image.

(I feel a bit of an *rse for not mentioning that these ones here were downsized - sorry )