I know

I just wish I had 2 grand sloshing about. I'd buy it like a shot really

Well... it is an amazing optic.

But to play devil's advocate for a moment - do we need such a dinner-plate-sized bit of glass at the fat end now that we have the K10D shake reduction?

I've already taken several hand-held shots that are only slightly soft, with an exposure of 1/10 s (a tenth) at the long end of my old KA Sigma 28-200 (wide open, admittedly), which is 300mm on my K10D in old money.

I have a Sony DSC T3, which I've had for about 18 months. In every respect except one, I have no complaints - it's small, great LCD, accurate exposures mostly, sharp, etc, etc, etc... and the video feature is marvellous if you have a decent sized memory stick pro duo.

The one thing that drives me nuts is the shutter lag. It's only about 1/3- 1/2 a second, but it almost stopped me taking pictures completely until I got my K10D. My portrait work became rubbish (not that it was particularly fab before with my ME Super, but at least I knew when I'd got it wrong when I pressed the button), my candids were truly awful, and I lost all confidence.

Now that I have my K10D, my mojo is returning, and I'm not so worried about the Sony. Within its limitations, it's great.

I get 8 with PEF, then it drops back to 1.5 seconds per frame.

With DNG, it's 10, then 3 seconds per frame.

When you get a chance could you try the following experiment:

- switch the camera to RAW
- switch it to continous mode
- point it at something bright so that the shutter speed isn't the limiting factor
- hold the button down and count the frames.

I'm interested in whether it can empty the buffer as fast as it can fill it - how many shots will it take in RAW mode before the 3 fps starts to slow down, if it does at all?

As I said, I got to 8 with my plebby old no-name 1 Gb card. Which for most of the time will be way more than I need.

I didn't buy a card with my K10D since I had an oldish unbranded 1Gb card kicking about.

1 and 2 Gb cards are pretty cheap on eBuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/116106, for instance), unlike in the camera shops where they can be ten times that price.

Now, I tested continuous shooting with my old card, and at max res jpeg, it did 40 shots before it started to slow down, and got to 8 in RAW.

Can the camera write the buffer continuously to the faster cards?

And if so, how fast does the card really need to be?

This is all exactly right. With the DA 18-55 zoom that I bought with the K10D, that menu item is not available, but with all my KA lenses it is.

But it's not quite what I was getting at - sorry, I probably haven't been clear enough.

Check out that brochure, p23. Look at the picture in the centre of the page; it's an image of the shake reduction menu item. The top part of that image is where you set the focal length according to the lens you've got on the camera.

The bottom part of the image has the 'wobbling hand' icon next to it, and to the right of that, a little scale with '-' at the left hand end and '+' at the right hand end. It looks like it's some sort of adjustment.

However, on the K10D that I have, the bottom part of that menu item is entirely absent - there's the focal length setting and that's all.

There's also no mention of this additional scale in the K10D manual AFAICS.

I'm just wondering what that scale was for - or indeed if it ever existed anywhere other than the marketing brochure.

Bought a K10D about 10 days ago, and I've noticed that there seems to be a discrepancy between the camera, and the anti-shake feature described in the brochure (p23) on the Pentax web site at:

http://www.pentax.co.uk/downloads/photo/uk/K10D/catalog_K10D_GB.pdf

Anyone know what this "3 levels of shake reduction" is or was?

Haven't been counting shots this charge, but I noticed just now that the battery indicator went from indicating full, to indicating half-full. This wasn't unexpected since it's been a week or more since it was charged.

What was unexpected was that two shots and about a minute later it went from half-full to indicating empty.

Anyone else noticed this?

Absolutely - once I invest in a couple more cards I'll get a reader too. But at the moment I have only the one SD card (and I tend to pull the shots off it on to the PC long before it fills up).

It's actually very quick to grab the shots off the card while it's in the camera, and then delete them freeing up the space. If I pull the USB plug out of the camera as soon as the images have transferred, it makes no noticeable difference to the battery life.

Not sure this is even possible - the LCD on top just displays "PC" as soon as you plug the USB connector in, and you can't do anything with it then AFAICT, other than use the PC to pull the images across.

But it would be nice to know whether the obvious power drain while connected is a fault or expected behaviour.