Top tip:

Never say how crappy most TCs are. I know they are, and pretty much all the regulars here know they are too. But you never know if your eBay buyer is lurking...



Don't say they're great, obviously, that would be evil. Say they're compact.

(I've just sold my last one... can you tell? )

Couldn't agree more. I hate the sort of doors that have rubber or plastic bendy hinges, and I equally hate slidy doors that rely on a bump on the plastic moulding to hold them shut. You just know they're going to snap off, or work loose if you keep gear for any length of time.

The AF-540 flash battery door is like this - a horrible design, and the AF360 is even worse, I understand.

Given the level of Pentax's build quality generally, these 'features' really niggle with me.

I don't hang out often over there, but I've not heard much if anything bad said about the 50-135 here.

The 16-50 certainly, seems to have had more than its fair share of SDM failures, although lots of people also seem to really like it too.

I've only heard good things about the 60-250 optically, though apparently it's very slow to focus - which seems a bit daft to me, for a longer lens. The sort of things you'd want one for (birds, aircraft, animals) are precisely the sort of thing you'd want fast focusing for. I've been quite impressed with the Bigma's focus speed so far, and that's a big beast, so no excuse IMO.

No personal experience of any of them - it would be good to get some really good statistical reliability information since of course, it's usually people's bad experiences that get the most airplay.

You could try justifying it on the basis that if you only have a few shots to transfer at a time, you're causing less wear and tear on the card door.

If you left it open for any time there'd be the risk of accidentally snapping it off, too.

So I reckon, once you factor in the cost of a trip to the service department, you're actually saving money...

I think this is a bit harsh.

There's only so much money available for gear, and by the time the camera and lenses are bought, justifying anything else becomes a lot harder, especially if the benefit is not large - after all, it's not exactly hard to remove the card and plug it into a reader.

I wouldn't have bought mine myself, but it is a very nice treat

Not really sure what point you're making here.
Nothing to disagree with there.

The thing is, none of that 'help' was any use at all if the guy with the camera is a beginner, shooting without movable lights and reflectors.

If all you have is the camera and the pop-up, nothing will work except moving the subject, and he didn't even mention it. (Or, I suppose, making the subject stay put and moving round her or him.)

I suppose there may be people out there who get all the kit, and then have so little idea that they have to resort to Adorama training vids to help them with the basics. I can imagine what their name might be too....

... or get the subject to turn their head a little.

I thought it was a bit poor, to be honest, that in the whole of that video, with the studio, and all that expensive gear, the one bit of advice that would actually help someone with just a camera and a pop-up flash, wasn't even mentioned once.

Edit: just noticed, FF's already pointed this out. Still think the point about the vid not mentioning it stands though - poor, poor poor.

Just tried it - yes. Just did one; detected and uploaded in a similar time.

Dunno yet. However, K-5 video files are HUGE.

So I might be uploading any I take overnight!

Edit: 16s of video, 100MB, about a minute from putting the camera down.

I imagine that if I use it all the time, it's going to clobber the battery life.