Pentax say that different sorts of batteries with different characteristics, cause problems. The special batteries are pretty cheap, and rather better than NiMHs, so in practice it's not a big issue - as long as you're not in Mongolia.

Sorry, it's nothing like full Silkypix.

But's it's still a great camera. Worth buying the full Silkypix for.

G

Actually, it's some way out. The part in best focus is the grass and twigs right in the foreground.

G

Pete,

When you starting talking sense in your normal posts, we'll be able to recognise your little jests.

But at the moment.........

G

Pete,

I don't think you have learned anything.

Now write out a hundred times:

Real photographers sharpen their own pictures.
Real photographers sharpen their own pictures.
Real photographers sharpen their own pictures.
Etc.

But by hand, with a pen on paper.

G

I wonder if rubbing with the cloth has induced a charge of static electricity which is attracting the dust.

Might have been worse. A huge genie could have suddenly appeared......

G

Joshua Hakin has just given me an idea.

Wouldn't it be nice if the next body had a bluetooth-driven remote control with a small screen showing the view through the viewfinder, and controls for focus and zoom, as well as shutter?

It would be a paparazzo's delight, of course, but would also have legitimate uses.

G

PS: Terrible news about those two News of the World reporters being locked up for mobile phone tapping. They got four months and six months. Should have been years, in my view.

Adding wirelss to a Mk II grip is a brilliant idea. It adds functionality without having to change the camera.

Rather than resuscitate TTL, which never worked that well anyway, I would prefer to see a more affordable, basic, flash unit which offered P-TTL. Going back to TTL is a bit, well, retro.

But I have to say there's not much I would add, or change. At the risk of sounding boring, this is a near-perfect machine.

And I can't see Pentax being able to come up with a significantly better camera in the foreseeable future.

Digital has come of age.

G

Sombre? Relaxed? She looks thoroughly fed up, which is a pity because the light is lovely.

G

I don't entirely agree about this particular pic being a portrait shot, though I do agree that this sort of picture is often best as a portrait.

For a satisfying portrait, the bird would need to have been shot from 45 degrees to the left, so that the body and tail would have been shortened.

Forcing a portrait by cutting off the tail doesn't, to me, look good.

I think this is a pic of a great looking bird, but, sadly, no amount of cropping will make it into a great pic.

Also, it looks rather flat on my monitor. I think it needs the monkey treatment.

G

PS: Keep 'em coming, Rodger.

[quote="Mongoose"]Actually, Mongoose, I think Silkypix and the other good RAW converters should do a better job of producing the JPEG file than the small program contained in the camera.

And if you change a few settings, which takes very little time, you will definitely end up with a better JPEG.

In particular, even the best of us seldom get exposure exactly right - assuming there is such a thing as exactly right.

And white balance is nearly always capable of improvement.

In Silkypix, I split my pictures into batches which were taken under the same conditions. I then correct white balance once, and apply to all the pictures in the batch. I usually also apply any changes to contrast, sharpness and colour type at the same time.

The only thing which may get individual treatment is exposure, but this takes hardly any time.

At the end, I convert to JPEG in the size I want. I don't convert to TIFF unless I want to do post-processing in Picture Window Pro, but this is seldom necessary.

The whole process is so quick that I really can't see any point in shooting in JPEG, given that a slight deviation from the best exposure will result in a degraded final image.

If I wanted inferior images, I would have just bought a Canon.

G