Lens now off the market. Thanks for looking

Guys like Ed Colver managed it in the 70's with manual focus and film, so despite the impressive pics (seriously, they're great) you may have to make your point clearer.

If you're trying to say that the K5 just 'gets out of the way' and lets you fulfil your photographic intentions with ease, then I agree. Compared to the K20D it has faster AF, better metering, and a generally more responsive nature. In dynamic shooting situations you rarely feel you're waiting for the object in your hands to catch up with what your brain is asking it to do. It's a superb photographic tool in a very small form factor - this last bit is an important differentiator for Pentax.

In more 'considered' photography these advantages are largely negated, so the *istD/K10/20 remain perfectly valid and highly competent tools.

These things are not to be overlooked. Right now I have a low-click D700 on loan. The owner, a technophile and casual photographer, will soon be trading it in for a D800. Though I adore my K5 and admit two short weeks isn't enough to draw definitive conclusions my gut feeling is the D700, despite being old hat now, retains some core competencies well above the latest Pentax offerings.

Shame the threat of redundancy looms large or I could be tempted to make a lowball offer. Anyway, this experience has made me think that plonking a FF sensor in with Pentax's existing tech at a sensible price point just won't be enough of an upgrade to justify the expense for those largely satisfied by the K5's abilities. For others, the 'affordable' FF segment could quite easily be filled by a slew of D700's and 5DII's jettisoned by upgraders this year.

Like it or not the new wave of mobile phones are moving upwards into compact territory and CSC/mirrorless are swamping the entry level, so traditional SLRs are naturally moving towards the higher ground.

Pentax would have to be bold, clever and offer more than just incremental improvements to make persuade those who feel they need/want a 135 format digital. Attracting existing photographers from other established systems would be even harder - dare I say that a colourful brick designed by Stevie Wonder won't cut it?

Pentax does have definite strengths and Ricoh are both solvent and seemingly ambitious, so anything could happen.

The difference is night and day. Having not used the K20D for a while, last weekend I took it as second body to a paid shoot. After being spoiled by the K5 the last year or more, everything about the K20D seemed less responsive, less refined, less capable. I ended up dropping the 'two body' plan and just swapping stuff around on the K5.

There's little wrong with the K20D of course, it's just that the K5 bests it in every department and noticably so. If you're shooting static subjects in good light then don't worry about it, but if you could benefit from better AF, usable live view, vastly improved ISO performance and an all round 'tuned up' body then the K5 at current prices is hard to ignore.

Well, that's a great start! Enjoy the lens, don't forget to mount it on a film camera for some real fishiness

Still available. Morley, you have PM.

Sold, paid for and posted

I'd say this is probably it then - inconsistent triggering of the shutter between exposures. Any time spent with the mirror down is time you're missing the moving stars, giving you gaps in the trails.

When stacking for trails I use manual 30s exposures with a cable release and continuous shooting mode, meaning no delays between shots. I can then lock the shutter button down and sit back with a brew whilst the camera does the rest. This leaves no visible gaps when stacking.

SRS = WIN (as I believe the kids would put it)

First place I look for anything these days

It does look like there are 'gaps' between the exposures, but I'm puzzled by the pattern. If they were consistent gaps I'd suggest the camera was doing dark frame subtraction/long exposure noise reduction operation with each frame.

Did you lock the shutter down with a remote release cord or were you manually triggering each frame?