But presumably not also with mirror-up, which is the point here. It's not an unreasonable thing to want - bracketing as well as camera-shake elimination.

It would be so nice if they'd do just one more K10D firmware release that sorted out a few of these niggles.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Ah, a black one. Probably a lot better than the silver one I had.

Excellent.

I can think of one person on this forum who I'd put at about 6.99 (he's mostly an artist, but has excellent self-marketing skills.

And one person on another forum who is a 1.

And I reckon there are quite a few here that know which two I'm referring to

That's the Bigma off my want list, then.

In case you haven't been following the recent lens threads, the latest sensation is the new DA 55-300, which by all accounts (especially mine ), knocks spots off the 80-320.

I used to have an 80-320, and didn't like it at all, especially at the long end. I got a 55-300 last week, used it all day at Farnborough on Sunday, and I'm delighted with it.

Well the only 'con' I can think of is that it used to be possible to edit a post after further posts had been added, so it would have been theoretically possible to change the sense of a discussion in an evil way.

The trouble with theoretical possibilities, is that some of them are bad, so it is tempting for those with power to base policy on them (always for our protection), rather than on the much more mundane, actual reality.

The fact of the matter is, there aren't any trolls here, seeking to distort people's argument and manipulate threads for their own ends. We're mostly a decent bunch with a common interest, and hang out here for our own and others' benefit. Occasionally something kicks off, but it's usually due to misunderstanding rather than malevolence, and it's all pretty self-policing.

And even if there were bad people around, there are much better ways of dealing with them than penalising the decent majority with pointless and unnecessary restrictions.

What happens if you meter wide open, and then calculate the shutter speed required for the aperture you end up choosing?

Lovely. The cricket is certainly better a bit darker; it had a slightly bleached look before, although in the sunlight I imagine it could easily have looked like that.

Butterfly exceptional too, although I think I prefer the more natural and more three-dimensional look of the original - especially since you haven't also cloned out the grass blade sticking up between its wings.

Regarding the overexposure - I take it you're aware of the stop-down metering issues with pre-A lenses and the K10D?

It's not just HDR though, is it? Bracketing has been around for a long time, if only to get the best exposure given imperfect metering systems.

My feeling is that there are one or two strange decisions being taken up in Pentax Towers.

For instance, not letting you switch off dark frame subtraction in the K20D seems nuts, given that the K10D has that feature, so the R&D spend must be close to zero.

Like forums, or maybe not at all like them, it's hard to imagine they take useful features out accidentally.

Why do you say this, Martin? It would only have to meter once.

And then once the mirror was up, if it can open and close the shutter once, I don't see why it can't do it 5 times.

I don't understand why they haven't given us a proper mirror lock up function - if it can be raised for sensor cleaning, and it can be raised prior to a shot, they've already decoupled the mirror up from the exposure.

The composition is uncanny.. the eye is drawn straight to the point of interest - amazing.



Not really my cup of tea either, but as Martin says, it's interesting to see.

Can the transitions between colours in the grads be made smooth, or do they have to go in steps like that?

One thing that does strike me as seriously redundant, though, if I might say, whatever one might think of the effects, is the fact that it says 'Photographer' at the bottom.

You'll often see the photographer's name in a border, but being told he's a photographer seems a bit surplus.