Tak 55mm f1.8, cheap, plentiful, pixie dust.

I think mobile phone photography can be creative and brilliant. I have seen some great examples. I would try it myself except I don't want or need a mobile phone.

I just want a good quality wide angle prime, 28mm equiv or thereabouts. More compact than the normal. The Q seems to be crying out for a pancake lens. There is a wa prime on the lens roadmap, but no details released yet. I do have the toy wide angle (freebie) but I don't expect to ever use it, I can do the gimmicky stuff in pp if I want.

An adaptor is an interesting prospect. I will explore the potential of the crop factor for macro and telephoto shots, although I have yet to see decent results. I am looking forward to see how it will perform for moon closeups. However, looking at the price of the K/M42 adaptor I'm sure the official adaptor will come at a high price tag.

The current price is low, must be around cost. Maybe a replacement is on the way.

From what I understand they are now selling very well. I agree, I think they should have opened at £400-£450. I think £250, which is presumably a desperate measure to boost demand, is too cheap (not complaining though). I did consider the Canon S100 but it was quite a bit pricier. I hope Pentax produce a reasonably priced wide angle prime, preferably a pancake. I still can't see the point of the toy lenses, this platform deserves more serious options.

It does produce very good, contrasty b&w's, just what I was after.

Thanks for the comments. I don't think it's really deserved, you should see all the stuff I delete.

I've been thinking about a compact for a while as I was getting a little bit too hung up on image quality and had lost sight of some other important factors. The above images are not the kind of thing I bought the Q for but it's a real bonus that the Q is more capable than I thought it would be and especially what the reviews would have you believe. It is above all else a feelgood camera, you just can't help playing with it. It gives me a much greater immediacy to my photography and it will allow me to get a lot of shots that I simply would not get with more bulky kit. It will definitely add an extra dimension to what I do, it is so different to the K5 that it complements it rather than competes. Most importantly to me the kids seem to react very well to the camera. This is the kind of thing I intended to use the camera for, no wide appeal obviously but a welcome addition to the family album. A bit of guinea pig fun:

I won't exist in 50 years time so I'm not fussed.

It definitely looks more like Lee than Cokin. Interesting. Not a bad price compared to Lee. I presume you find the 125mm length sufficient to use the grads as full ND's too - the Lee's are 150.

Played a bit more, raw this time (yet to update the firmware though). Noise just isn't the issue I feared it would be. I shot some horse shots in difficult lighting. One of the advantages of the f1.9 lens is that ISO400 will be enough for most low light situations. The lens is sharp wide open and the large depth of field means it's very easy to get the subject in sharp focus. I thought the large dof would be a negative but actually it will be a positive. There is a lot of barrel distortion with the prime lens, I need to play around to get the correction just right.

The metering is very impressive, seems better than the K5. It gets almost everything bang on. The combination of the large depth of field and the accurate metering means you get the shot, very handy for street photography. It handles highlights very well.

The handling is just great. The layout is of course very familiar, which makes it easy swapping between cameras. How I shoot virtually everything is Av mode, adjust aperture quickly and to dial in some exposure compensation. The edial gets this done without having to go through menu options. The build and feel of the Q is top notch.

There is some shutter lag, noticeable on fast moving subjects, but I don't intend much action photography with this and on the odd occasion that is necessary then the large depth of field means that you can overcome this limitation by prefocusing somewhere close and anticipating motion.

Battery life is a bit rubbish but spare batteries are cheap and lozenge sized.

I think the problems with the reviews of the Q are that they are based on a release price of £600 so the image quality is compared to similarly priced cameras. If the pricing had been more realistic then the reviews would have been much more favourable. I am perfectly satisfied with the image quality:

























This last one is a 100% crop, about 1/16th of the original image. So less than 2 square mm of sensor To be honest I've seen worse macros from a Ksomething and proper lens:




For the prime lens I don't find much sharpening is required. In fact I think the default in camera processing applies too much sharpening and noise reduction, both can be reduced for a more natural look.

That's what I paid at Park, I don't think the deal will last. I might be able to sell the free toy lens to get that price down by a few quid.

The price has now rocketed on Amazon. SRS have them at £299 and I think it's well worth it at that price. I've taken some RAW's now and they are looking very good. I'll post a mini review of the Q later on once I've used it a bit more. There is lots to consider. It suits me and it fits my requirements very well. But it might be completely unsuitable for others.

Beautiful.