There is something about K20D shots - even at web resolutions, there is a quality about them that is different somehow from K10D pictures. Sharpness, yes, but more than that - an intangible impression of fine detail.

I hesitated to comment on this after the first few I noticed, since I believed that at web resolutions, there couldn't be any real difference in sharpness.

But the more K20D shots I see, the more convinced I am that I'm not imagining it.

Can anyone explain this?

That's true.

However seductive this facile claptrap sounds if you try and extend it to origins of life, that's all it is.

It was pathetic when the creationists were doing it, and it's almost as pathetic, and a lot more dangerous, now that the ID lot have espoused it.

However it remains the case that non-science is being pushed as science to an audience incapable of seeing the lies, and diverting attention from where educational effort should be being spent.

And that stops a lot of people from enjoying the real goods.

Doubtless you'll be able to counter with yet another hackneyed but superficially attractive one-liner from any number of discredited ex-scientists, but that's all it will be.

You're a good photographer, Don, and a creative and inventive engineer. I respect you greatly for that.

But Intelligent Design as a way of accounting for origins is wrong. Get over it.

Fair enough.

I'd use the word 'nature', rather than 'creation', but apart from that we don't differ too much there.

Although almost all the pictures of yours that I've seen have very little to do with that. They're creations, inventions, composites and artistic additions. Interesting though many of them are, I don't think they particularly reflect nature, or indeed creation if such it be.

In all honesty I can look at the awesomeness of nature and be impressed any time.

To want to record it though is something different.

I think it's a very legitimate combination of a desire for self-improvement, a desire to create and enjoy good art, and a desire for affirmation from one's peers. That and money, of course.

You might say, 'well where do such desires come from?' But I couldn't possibly comment.

I see where you're coming from, Don.

Intelligent design as a way of accounting for life on earth has been thoroughly debunked, and indeed exposed for the pseudoscience it is. I know all about what they say about irreducible complexity (trust me on that) and it's all crap.

I'm not likely to live long enough to be prepared to spend any fraction of my remaining years debating it here, though - I'd prefer to try and improve my photographic skills.

Incidentally, this is simply not true. Incremental evolution takes place as long as there is no radical survival pressure, of which there's been lots in the last 200 million years (I know your timescale was a bit arbitrary, but I think it proves the opposite of the point you were trying to make).

The dinosaurs were around, enjoying incremental rather than radical improvements, for much, much longer than the mammals with breasts have been.

Any observer of the time would have thought that it just didn't get any better (at least not radically so) than T. Rex and his chums already had it.

And now look...

Where are the dinosaurs now?

They're in the same place as the bellows cameras, and indeed many of the early SLRs.

There are, but apart from a few vintage ones that are maintained because of their historic value, they're all small, most of them are very old, and none of them go very fast. There's also a lot of effort being put into developing small jet engines, to power the smaller aeroplanes. Product liability legislation in the USA has crippled such development for a very long time, so it's not simple to generalise from comparisons.

No analogy is perfect. Mine was intended to show the error of imagining that where technology is concerned, we're very good at spotting optimum designs. I don't think we are.

Aero engine people were saying almost exactly this about piston-engined aeroplanes.

They'd done variable pitch propellers, turbo- and then superchargers, contra-rotating props...

... coaxed just about as much out of squashing fuel-air mixtures between lumps of metal as they could...

... and then that annoying bloke Whittle came along.

This is true, all other things being equal, but only relevant in the short term.

The thing is, my several-year-old Sony DSC-T3 takes better stills and better video than any still or video camera of <insert year here>. My computer is also a much, much better typewriter, games system, newspaper and hifi, than the separate bits I'd have needed to do those jobs some years ago.

In x years time, where (I guess) x is more than 5 and less than 50, market willing, there will be a camera capable of taking stills and video better than the eye can resolve.

Once the technology catches up with evolution, which has had several millions of years of head start, it won't need to get any better since we won't be able to see it.

Personally, I think the real problem is that the vast majority of us, including me, cannot improve our creativity at the same speed as the technology allows us to take technically better pictures.

Therefore we tend to fear the levelling effect of the technology.

So I point my new Sigma 10-20 at a brightly lit, contrasty subject, centre spot AF as usual. It focuses quickly on the K10D, with focus confirmation (yes - green hexagon, not red spot).

However, the subject is about ten feet away, and the lens indicates distinctly under three.

I haven't really paid much attention to the indicated focus distance before, not least because other than the kit lens I got with the camera, this is the first new brand new lens I've bought in about 20 years) so I have no idea whether the markings on the lens are supposed to be much more than an indication.

Sorry to start up another "is my stuff working properly" thread, but I always like to be confident that the fault, if there is one, lies behind the viewfinder, not in front of it - I'm qualified and experienced in fixing such problems.

So how typical is this? I need to do some more rigorous testing, but it would be nice to have an idea of what's normal.

Ta as always..