Step 1. Cover the viewfinder.

I observed the total eclipse from Northern France back in '99. To be honest getting any great photos is rather difficult without specialist equipment. My advice would be to enjoy the fleeting spectacle and forget about the photography,

I have one of these in excellent condition, caps and box. I'm off to the UK tomorrow so if anyone is interested then please drop me a line pronto. I'm looking for £400 + postage which I think is a fair deal looking at recent prices I can deliver it to Brighton over the weekend or London next Tuesday. If anyone is interested then I'll try and take some images if they want and inspect the lens in minute detail, but it looks immaculate to me.

My kind of town (city). The colour is more successful for me but the lens distortion really needs to be corrected, quite a lot of barrelling going on.

Somehow I don't think it is really a 700mm f4.

Same comment applies.

That's iso3200 which is not relatively low. It is a dark scene which is more prone to noise, if you lift the shadows then you will intoduce more. I suspect what you are seeing is completely normal.

The K50 is currently the entry level model just a bit cheaper than the K-S1. I suppose they are aimed for two different markets, traditionalist who value features such as weather resistance and the younger crowd who like flashing lights.

For me it is about one simple concept. Demonstrate excellence with Pentax.

That isn't happening. I know where to find excellent Pentax images and excellent Pentax photographers. Use them.

They have to get the product in the major retailers. They have to demonstrate that images taken with Pentaxes can be excellent. They have to get the message across.

I recently intervened in a thread on a forum I can't name. A potential purchaser asked the proverbial question Canon or Nikon (that question sadly is asked all the time) and had been researching which was the better high end APSC camera to buy for several months. I suggested looking also at a Pentax, showed some of my images taken with a Pentax. Result? K3 purchased a couple of days later.

They are pushing on social media but the images really are frankly often ordinary and sometimes poor. They have given up on the PPG - why? It was a brilliant idea to showcase the best Pentax images and a great source for Pentax to discover images which they could use to promote their gear.

I think the problem is that the marketing department is staffed with just marketing people. They need photographers in there.