Hi All

This is a discussion thread for this month's competition which I have just set. Many thanks to David Trout for choosing me as the winner of the November Competition, which attracted a good number of excellent entries. I hope that the theme of the December Comp is sufficiently wide to enable lots of entries with a diverse range of images.

Please note, there's an error currently on the closing date which is showing as '07/12/2014' when it should be '31/12/2014'. I have asked John to sort this out.

Good luck and don't forget to stick to the normal Monthly Comp rules, i.e. shots must be taken during December 2014 on Ricoh / Pentax cameras or their clones.

Best wishes
David

Agreed.

Further to post above and to richandfleur's link, I'm not trying to claim the K-3 is anywhere near as good at high ISO as Sony A7, just observing that it's no worse than my K-5iis in my opinion.

Regards
David

A question:

Why is it that the 'independent' reviews of the K-3 almost all state its excellence at high ISO's (as this review also does), but a large proportion of opinion on here seems to think that it is 'crap' at high ISO's?

At reasonable ISO levels I don't notice mine being worse than my K-5iis. Up to 3200 the K-3 is fine and I certainly wouldn't want to use my K-5iis at any higher than this level. I did a shoot recently at a live music venue in near darkness and the K-3 produced excellent results, also as a bonus it is brilliant at focussing in low light, even better than a K-5iis in this regard.

Sorry to go off on a tangent!

Regards
David

Who said anything about blowing air into the mirror box Nigel? When using a Giottos blower you set 'mirror up' and blow a defined stream of air at whatever is on the sensor to dislodge it, it is not just a general blowing of air into the mirror box. The Giottos blower is well established and is used by a great many photographers and I don't recall any complaints about it or this method.

I can't see why this is any worse than simply changing a lens and it has never caused me a problem. Why would air from a rocket blower contain more dust than the general air in the environment? If it shifts the dust from where you don't want it (on the sensor) then surely that is the objective? You mention using an arctic butterfly, yes great idea except for one flaw that no-one seems to think about. To use something like this you need the lens removed for a much longer period than you do to give it a quick blast with a rocket blower. The longer the lens is removed, the greater the chance of more dust entering, which once inside is likely to settle on the sensor at some point.

I can only speak from experience my experience is that the rocket blower has been effective in removing dust from the sensor.

As an aside, it has not been necessary to do this on the K-3 and I think I've only done it once or twice on the K-5iis. When I was using a K-x regularly it was affected by dust quite often and the rocket blower was pretty good at shifting it.

Regards
David

It is most definitely not right. Focus on the DA*300 is virtually silent and manual focus is very smooth.

Regards
David

We use Tosh laptops at work (software company) and they are usually extremely reliable, we've probably had hundreds of them and I am struggling to recall a single hardware failure.

I can't comment on Toshiba's customer service for laptops, but I can from personal experience highly recommend them for TV's. I had a top of the range Tosh 42" LCD TV that developed vertical lines on the panel, which did disappear after the TV had been on for a short while. The TV was over 4 years old and had no warranty. I contacted Toshiba and they advised me there was a fault with the panels on a batch of TV's, of which my TV was one. They offered me £200 for the TV (and let me keep it) and also offered to sell me another TV at factory cost. I got a superb 55" LED backlit LCD TV for £750, which at the time was £1200 less than the shop price for the same model. I then sold my TV for £150, so if you deduct the £200 that Tosh gave me, then deduct the £150 I got by selling the TV, I actually ended up with a £1950 telly for £400. Thanks Toshiba, I will always buy your TV's!

Cheers
David

It shouldn't be a problem using a Giottos Rocket blower, I've used mine many times with no issues. Remember to hold the camera facing downwards when you use the blower and you won't introduce more dust. I also change lenses very frequently and always hold the camera downwards when doing so. I don't have problems with dust on the sensor.

Regards
David

I see no reason why not David, it is superb on any good lens, including the DA 100 WR F2.8 macro. It is less reliable on a zoom such as the DA55-300, but only because of the F4 max aperture on this lens which hampers the focussing. On a F2.8 lens it is magic.

Regards
David

Lovely shots and a nice clean background too.

Regards
David