Sorry Mike, my monitor didn't show the whole picture in the forum, clicking on it brought up the complete image so I now see that it's bigger and darker than the other marks.

Have a really close look at the sensor again, use a magnifying glass (or a reversed 50mm lens) and check the top left hand corner of your sensor, as that's where this object/scratch is. I would expect you to be able to see it.

Dan

Normally (and I'm talking generally, not Pentax specific here), scene modes will apply various adjustments to colour and sharpness, depending on the scene selected. So 'Landscape' may boost greens and blues, and increase sharpness (and using a small aperture), whereas 'Portrait' will flatter skin tones more, and perhaps reduce sharpness a little (and pick a wider aperture).

Having said that, I've never owned a camera with scene modes on, and this knowledge has been gained by demonstrating the workings of other cameras (Nikon and Canon mainly) to people. Pentax may do their scene modes differently. Your manual should give you an idea.

As John says, just have a play with the camera and see if the scene modes look good to you, or whether you're happier taking more control by using Av for instance.

Dan

Which one?!?

There are a load of spots and lines on there, I think it's just time you did a wet clean if they're not coming off with the blower brush.

I bashed the sensor on my *istD with the tip of my rocket blower, didn't do that any harm. Although I wouldn't advise doing it (bashing the sensor, I mean), I think the majority of the warnings (from the manufacturers) about not touching your sensor is in order to encourage you to send your camera off for cleaning (to the manufacturers).

I wet cleaned my *istD every other week, because spots were always showing up on that. The K10D's much better in that respect, but I'd still much rather clean the sensor than have to go through every photo with the healing brush.

Dan

Sadly not, had a read of it in Waitrose the other night, no mention of SRS. Chopped and changed it a bit but overall not too bad.

Worst thing though is that I'm now apparently from 'Greater London'. The sprawling mass that is London hasn't quite made it here, yet, thankfully.

Dan

And I quite often use mine handheld. When you've used a Tamron 300mm f/2.8, which is basically one big lump of glass and brass, the DA*300mm is a featherweight!

Dan

Set the self-timer on the camera to the 2 second with mirror lock-up, and try the flash then. If the pre-flash is working okay, you will see this fire before the mirror flips up, then the main flash will go with the exposure. This should make it very easy to tell whether the pre-flash is firing as expected with P-TTL.

Dan

Me too. I am intrigued as to how much they edited out though, did they keep the SRS reference in there?

Original (slightly modified to make sense on my blog), is here: http://www.danielbridge.co.uk/blog/2009/01/jessops-no-longer-selling-pentax.html

Dan

Mattmatic's the flash guru around here (I just use an old manual one, so P-TTL is largely a mystery to me ), and he's done a flash guide.

See this thread for details: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/Matt-Matics-Pentax-dSLR-Flash-Guide-9624/...

Dan

I realise that Chris, but that issue's been out for a week now.

You didn't happen to get a pic of that other guy's face, did you?

Dan

Yorkshire? You do realise you live in Ipswich..? Essex is much nearer for you.

Dan