With mine (firmware 1.11), the initial view (ie the 'instant review' - the one that comes up immediately after taking the shot) comes up non-rotated.

But that's fine - if I take the shot with the camera vertical, I want the instant review non-rotated, since the chances are the camera is still vertical.

Then when I press the playback button, the shot is displayed rotated to portrait.

This rotation is governed by two things:

- the Save Rotation Info setting (which specifies whether or not orientation is saved when you take the picture).


- the Auto Image Rotation setting (which governs whether the image is rotated if it was saved with its orientation info).

If a) orientation info was saved for an image, b) it was shot with the camera vertical and c) Auto Image Rotation is On, then a portrait image will be rotated on playback.

So if you've been playing with the Save Rotation Info setting, you can end up with some of the images on your card saved with their orientation, and some not. Only the ones that have their orientation saved will rotate at all.

This can then be very confusing when you come to work out what's going on. Guess how I know!

I can't get the menu screen to rotate at all. Do you mean the status screen? If so, that's governed by the Auto Screen Rotation setting, under Status Screen (Setup menu 1).

Posting the full size image into a post so that it displays immediately is a bit antisocial - since the whole image has to be downloaded before the browser can resize it.

If there are several multi-megabyte images it takes ages - and I have a pretty fast internet connection.

I've AdBlocked those images now, since the page just takes too long to load.

Which is a shame - I'd be very interested to see a crop, or indeed the full image if it was linked rather than embedded - then I could click on it myself to download it when I'm ready.

It would have been, but now it's out in the news.

There are two options - either the reporters get to the bottom of it and report the actual truth, or everyone makes up their own mind based on scant evidence, and their own prejudices.

Not saying we'll be able to tell the difference between the two, but they're the options all the same.

It is interesting that he was so spectacularly successful in getting into the news so quickly, and in being the catalyst for such support.

However, if he's that good, but actually crooked in some way, you'd think he'd realise that it would backfire on him, Jonathan Aitken-stylee.

All this obfuscation by the police, though, seems exceedingly dodgy. If there are no court proceedings pending, why the need to be secretive?

The police statement is exceedingly defamatory - but without coming clean about what the guy is alleged to have done.

They're prepared to have the fight in public, but their tactics are to sow the seed of doubt in our minds, without having to actually allege any detail they could be challenged on.

If I were a cynical type, this would be just the sort of thing I'd expect the powers that be to concoct to take the heat off their minions.

We're unlikely to ever know the truth; that much seems clear.

John, with respect, how can

... possibly be interpreted as 'Pentax only images'?

Possibly in something of a rush, given the typos... and in fact that isn't what it says.

[quote="PU"]3g. Please keep discussion to Pentax or Pentax releated subjects and images. Images taken with other brandes may be linked to if of Pentax-releated interest.[/quote]The date last updated at the bottom is still showing 2009, too.

Come on chaps, get a grip.

I much prefer the new crop - and it might be worth indulging in a bit of gaussian blur to reduce the distraction from the background.

If you feel evil, you might try selecting the face, then refining the selection to reduce the selection to about 5 pixels or so inside the face's outline.

Then apply much more aggressive sharpening than you'd normally get away with. Since you've reduced the size of the selection, you might escape the usual halo that gives away the sort of oversharpening we often see.

You might then need to reduce the noise a little, in the bit you've oversharpened.

It's not for the purists, this technique, and of course it doesn't put in detail that wasn't there. And if you overdo it, it will look vile.

But if you're lucky, it can give the illusion of sharpness, which is probably worth it in this case, since his expression is so good.

The thing that grabs me instantly when I look at this picture, is the concentration on his face.

That and the fact that the guitar is edge on, and therefore a bit devoid of detail, makes the face the focal point of the picture, so it's a shame that it's not quite in focus.

It's also a very tight crop, possibly because there was a lot of distraction in the rest of the frame, but for maximum impact, a crop like this really needs to justify the main point of interest.

The background is distracting, but just about salvaged by the fact that it's the same colour as the guitar.

So although it's a great expression, the lack of focus on the face, and only being able to see the edge of the guitar spoils it for me I'm afraid.

I do realise that this sort of thing is far from easy, and you're very limited by the light and the background.

This is, of course, blatantly in contravention of eBay rules:

[quote="eBay"]Ending a listing early for the following reasons is prohibited as it is considered fee avoidance:

Cancelling bids and ending a listing early because the reserve price hasn't been met to avoid reserve fees. See Reserve Price Policy.

Cancelling bids and ending a listing early in order to sell the item off-eBay. You should be aware that as well as avoiding fees, you risk fraud by selling items off the eBay website. If a member writes to you to ask you to sell away from the eBay website, please report them to us.[/quote]I think eBay are indulging in daylight robbery too, with their extortionate fees, but if I was bidding on an item, I'd be a bit peeved if it just disappeared from sale, and I later found out why.

The thing that depresses me about all this isn't so much the fact that we are surrounded by the ignorant and the officious - we knew that already, and that much of life is about constructing strategies to enjoy our time despite their efforts.

It's that once it starts getting talked about, there isn't a clear statement by those in authority, and by those that claim to offer impartial journalism, what the actual law is, and what are the limits of police powers - and those of private security operatives, for that matter.

The law isn't actually complicated, and for the BBC not to report it clearly along with all the other issues they take up when they run a story like this, is just negligent.

Even the senior policeman they had on the radio programme Ken mentioned wasn't exactly clear in his statement of what the law says on the matter.

It was pure luck in this case, that it was a dad, taking pictures of his kid eating an ice cream. It brought out all the nice middle class family types who like to photograph their kids and felt personally invested in the issue.

If it had been an amateur tog photographing buildings on the streets of London, especially if he had a beard and a comb-over, and was less than articulate when the reporters swung by, no one would have given a damn.