Much as I love her, my mum, bless her, is possibly the worst photographer in the whole world. She shouldn't be posting her photos anywhere online.

It's not just me then. I tried to take the lens off a Canon 1000D the other month, expecting it to be trivial, and I nearly dropped them both.

The first one is troubled a bit by the distracting ground detail. The second (listed as 1) has the bird lacking a bit in the sharpness department.

Other than 2, the others lack a subject, in that there's lots of stuff in the shot, but nothing obvious to look at, no pleasing route for the eye through the image.

3, 4 and 5 are very sloping. You want to fix the horizons on the computer really.

However, the third one, cunningly numbered '2', I like. It has a very pleasing symmetry, and the birds in the middle are nicely isolated. Exposure is exactly right - getting the sun like that without all the rest of it being a black silhouette is excellent.

At 1/640 and F11, there's probably no camera shake, so you were probably focused on the reeds in the background rather than the birds, which is the only thing I'd say detracts a little from the image - the birds and the rippling water should be sharper really. Nice though. It's worth a decent sized print, perhaps.

Edit: you could also probably do a bit of selective sharpening to create the illusion of more crispness in the central region where the ripples and the birds are.

Maybe that thing *is* the K-5 replacement

You'll find that lots of people are K-5 fans, and lots of people have K-5 gripes. There are plenty of people, including myself, that are in both groups.

Neither of these will come as any surprise to you, I'm sure.

You won't be able to make the right choice, except by accident, other than by handling the K-5 yourself. Only then will you be able to make your own subjective comparison with the 60D.

Spec sheets are only half the story. Accounts of personal experience can only be a small part of the other half. You'll find lots of brand enthusiasts on a Canon forum, for sure, so you'll learn nothing unbiased that way.

TBH, you sound more like you've already made your decision, and are just looking for a bit of final encouragement.

Who indeed, but it is not credible that Jonathan Martin, General Manager, Pentax UK, does not know what's going on.

According to the Pentax guy I spoke to at SRS in November, Pentax UK is only 15 people. Not exactly a large bureaucracy where you'd expect most of them to know nothing.

Well as with all lenses, it does get sharper from F2.4 to F8 or so.

I guess it depends on how soft yours is at F2.4.

Why not eliminate the possibility of front- or back-focus, and then take a photo, on a tripod, remote and/or delayed release, carefully focused on something reasonably close with lots of recognisable detail.

Then post the image and a 100% crop.

I've looked at a couple of these recently, and several others have them. With an example it would be possible to offer a view as to whether it looks consistent with what others are experiencing.

It's been said before, but with rare exceptions, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that no image that isn't a 100% crop, viewed on the web, can give any information at all about lens sharpness.

You have rigorously excluded camera shake?

Indeed.

[quote="UK GM"]There are rumors of a Full Frame Pentax?
I've not seen that one.

Did you know there's also a Facebook page asking Pentax for a Full Frame camera?
I didn't know that,
[/quote]Lying toad.

Either that or his head, and those of all his minions, are so far up somewhere that they can neither see nor hear.

Or of course, it really is true that they give so little of a damn about their actual customers' requests that their policy is to positively avoid all forums.

Erm, I presume.