I'm not against advertising (except when it interrupts a good film), but I just wanted to make the point that excessive expenditure on it -- ie expenditure that is unrelated to anticipated income or that is way beyond industry norms in % terms -- is self-defeating in all normal market conditions.

Advertising has its (important) place, of course, but it is easy to see it as some sort of panacea rather than as just the one component it is in the overall process of getting people to buy a product.

Nothing is going to change the fundamentals. Pentax cameras have a v small market share, and are in the uncomfortable position of being way outside the top three. Spending a disproportionate sum on marketing and PR will be money unwisely spent. It is a long haul ahead for the brand, and the financial logic in the longer term is for further consolidation of the companies producing cameras.

By contributing to this site we have (most of us) made clear that we like Pentax cameras above other comparable offerings. But let's not fool ourselves: the differences between the different dSLRs available are pretty slender. The Nikon D7100 and the Pentax K3 are worthy rivals -- probably the main difference is in the economies of scale that attach to each, with all that means for each company's bottom line and thus ability to sell and support its product.

... or even at the comments from users on Amazon. The best electronic viewfinders are now very good, but I suspect from price alone that the X5's viewfinder cannot be in that category. If you're hoping to take pictures from a moving vehicle it would be worth checking that the pixels in the viewfinder can keep up, without any lag.

A great set.

The logo pulls the eye in the wrong direction. It's hard to focus on the pics because of it. Perhaps if it has to stay, it could be more genuinely a watermark, with the strength of the colour dialed right back. I at first thought you were having a quiet joke, with 'LOL' in grey outline behind the letters

I like no.2 (even so!). The disappearance of the camper van is an improvement.

There's a limit to what you can do with this particular shot, though I think it should still be possible to get the building upright without losing the roof. I don't know what software you have, but you could (eg) download ShiftN (http://www.shiftn.de/), which is free, and you'll be able to see what's possible. You may have to go beyond the program's automatic function.

It's a wonderful building and you've captured it with the light playing on its south face. The skaters locate the season and are a good foreground. But I agree with the comment above: you need to restore the building to perpendicular. You will lose some width in doing so, but that shouldn't matter. I also agree that it would have been better to try to capture the full length of the skaters. If you cropped the sides, as correcting perspective will do (or had shot in portrait format), you might find yourself with a tighter composition. All these things will work themselves out through experimentation -- unlike film, there's no expense with digital in taking numerous different shots and discovering which arrangement pleases you best. In time, instinct will take over.

If true, I wonder whether Pentax have judged the market right -- in the sense that while the K3 is the linear successor to the K5 models and has a lot going for it, their R&D effort is now rumoured to be directed at the 645D II. I imagine the original 645D model is suffering somewhat from certain FF cameras having in many respects caught up with it, so there is a fair case for trying to re-establish the IQ margin to be expected of a medium-format camera. But I'm not clear the mark II will be able to outperform its smaller brethren in the way the original 645D did -- and so command the same sort of price in the market.

Meanwhile, FF ambitions for Pentax take a back seat, with the apparent assumption that APS-C will continue to be, overwhelmingly, the format of choice for DSLRs. If that is Pentax's judgement -- and none of us can know for certain -- they may turn out to be entirely right. But I have a sneaking worry that, just as they arrived late at the digital party, with all the disadvantages that then ensued, they are also going to be horribly late to tackle FF.

So, if FF is of no particular interest, embrace the K3. It seems in almost all significant respects a worthy successor to the (for its time) exceptional K5.

Striking sky. No fires in the vicinity, I hope.

ditto re position of building. The building to the right has removed the temptation to make the composition weaker. As for the stalks of grass, secateurs are an essential part of a photographer's kit. Nice pic.