Just to muddy the waters for you once more, I notice that Amazon have sorted out their pricing on the Samsung equivalent of the AF540. The only drawback is that there does seem to be a bit of a wait for it.

It's only a little more than the Pentax AF360, and includes more power, and swivel. I've had one for a few months now, and now that I've got the hang of it, I'm very pleased.

It is, very. As you've no doubt realised, it's the focusing that is a complete nightmare.

The tiniest, tiniest error will give you shots that are slightly out of focus, as with this one, which is nevertheless not at all bad as a first go.

You need very small apertures, to get the most DoF you can (which still won't be much), so you'll need lots of light, or very long exposures. Which is why Clarky uses that whacking great dual flash effort we've seen.

It's worth the effort though.

The trick, if trick there be, is to think really, really carefully about why you're upgrading - what the new features are, what you'll use them for, and whether they're worth it to you at the price at the time.

Then you can postpone jumping in until you need to, and having jumped in, you can remind yourself of the reasons when something newer comes out.

However, even if this is true, I can't say it without blushing...

... since my actual reason for upgrading from the ME Super to the K10D was 'ah, Pentax at last have a 10 MP dSLR, and I'll be able to use all my M-series lenses with it'.

I guess I was lucky that the K10D is so good, and that the stop-down-metering issues just prompted me to look to the newer lenses anyway.

Yeah, baby, bring it on...

Wise words indeed.

The "Auto" in "Auto-focus" does not mean "no technique required".

What????

Has someone bought it? Someone from here?

If so, I feel we should continue to hear of that DS.

It has been treated like royalty, kept at the expense of many aristocratic companions, and we've come to know it almost as a friend. A rather wayward and idiosyncratic friend, but a friend nevertheless, with one special and unique quality.

It rendered George momentarily speechless, and so will forever occupy a special place in our hearts.

In such august company I'm a little hesitant about commenting in other than glowing terms, but what the heck.

My feeling is that the crop at the top makes the portrait unbalanced. If we're going to see his neck and collar, I think we ought to see the top of his head as well. I don't see what's gained by removing it. It would serve a purpose if it forced attention to a more contained area of detail, but there's so much detail, and texture as John says, that the effect of the crop is weakened, or so it seems to me.

My other thought is that this gritty, grainy effect is all very well for black and white, and I know many people with more of a black and white background than I have, do like it. But to my taste (and that's all it is), when practically every pore has a black speck in the middle of it, it's too much.

If it were colour, I suspect it would look oversharpened.

But all that said, I do quite like it. I suspect I'd like it a lot more with the top of his head in the picture.

Planetary alignments are brief.

Really? I wouldn't take it as rudeness, unless, obviously, someone came back and said that we were all suckers for staying with Pentax. Maybe we are, for all I know.

Switching brand is a terribly expensive experiment to carry out, so if someone like Brian, well-respected in these parts, was to come back and make reasoned comparisons, it would be a service to the community, not rudeness.

Some might, but I don't see Brian like that.

If Nikon gear really is that much more expensive than Pentax, it's not like he couldn't afford to come back

You certainly would. Please share your thoughts on the pros/cons of the two sets of kit. I've never had anything but Pentax, so comparisons would be interesting to me.