Top tip: avoid typos in any post that you make when commenting on grammar or spelling.

Otherwise, people even more pedantic than you will feel obliged to comment also...

Personally, I think that American though it be, it's quite handy to be able to distinguish between a computer program (sic) and either a TV programme, or a programme of events, without resorting to the context.

It may be of course, that you're noticing back focus that was always there, but is only evident now with the wafer thin DOF that you get with as wide an aperture as F1.4.

It was what I assumed to be the case when I initially saw back focus with my FA50 F1.4; as I said in that older post, adjusting it cured it, but taking out the adjustment didn't un-cure it, which is what surprised me enough to comment at the time.

My K10D is nowhere near as old as a shutter count of 40k (about 13k), but I have seen evidence of the AF adjustment moving.

I described what I found here, and there was some discussion in the posts that followed.

I have no explanation for it, but I'm fairly confident that I didn't imagine it.

So I'm not all that surprised if your K10D's AF could do with some adjustment after all this time, even if it was perfect before.

Is it like, the foreground is even more exaggeratedly so, and larger than life, whereas the background is even wider, even taller?

So more 'full on' somehow?

Extreme wide angles do this too, without bending straight lines, though, so, what is it with the bendy lines?

Is it 'hall of mirrors' style fascination, or is there something more?

Might I play devil's advocate here, for a moment?

This is a serious question, because I often find something incongruously appealing about fisheye shots, which historically I've never liked.

And I can't quite work out what it is.

Funky angles, bendy lines, but so what?

The ones I like best are the ones closest to rectilinear, but even so, the bendy ones do have a certain appeal that I can't quite put my finger on.

Can anyone articulate what I'm seeing? Is it just that it's an unfamiliar perspective, and therefore interesting? Or is there something more?

Funnily enough, a friend of mine had decided to get her first SLR, and I was persuading her to go Pentax, and look for a used K20D.

Off she went, trawled eBay and then MSNed me a link to your auction, John, asking me if it would be Ok.

I said that it would be excellent, and that you were a completely trustworthy eBay seller.

Sadly, she decided that your body, and a kit lens, would be more than her £450 budget, and she's now bought a Canon 400D

(I did say that a K10D or K200D would be a good alternative, but it seems that there were hordes of 400Ds on eBay at the time, many going for a song.)

It would be nice if the Pentax User one didn't have the typo at the bottom.

"If the model is under 18 year of age"

Minor, but even so.

It does seem hard to believe.. but looking at my SMC-A 100mm F4 macro, which does have a 49mm filter ring, the actual hole in the front isn't that big:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0344-crsmsh.jpg[/IMG]

So maybe they can achieve F2.8 by having more glass at the front, even with the same filter size.

Normally when a Pentax is reviewed in any of the PC mags I read, it reinforces my view that while their staff may know about computers (also arguable, at times), they certainly do not know about cameras.

Be that as it may, their K-x review is very positive when it comes to image and video quality, noise, fps, handling, and the kit lens (which was "sharper than other budget kit lenses, and competed with the premium lenses we used with the Canon 500D and Nikon D90").

Downsides they commented on were the mic picking up the "rattles" from the SR doing its thing in video mode, and, interestingly, the expensive Pentax lenses, citing the £250 FA 50, in comparison with all the others' F1.8 50mms, at around £100. Just as well they don't know what it's gone up to, eh?

Anyway, they gave it four stars; only the Canon 1000D (best buy) and Nikon D90 (ultimate) came out with more.

Others scored as follows, FWIW:

Nikon D3000 (3 stars)
Sony Alpha A330L (3 stars), Alpha 380L (2 stars)
Olympus E-620 (3 stars)
Canon 500D (3 stars)

I'd suggest that the PPing has gone too far with this. Even looking at the version the forum hasn't scaled, there's some nasty stuff going on round the edge. Or is it a JPG quality issue?