Of course, at the moment, there are no entries to view which is not unusual for the monthly competition. Because the entries have to be shot during the current month it can often take a while to get going.

Hopefully there will be a surge towards the latter part of the month .

Glyn

Before I was converted over to shooting in raw I used to leave the camera in auto WB and only adjust it if the first, test, shot did not look correct. This certainly happened in winter snow scenes with my K-5 where the auto WB tended to produce images with a blueish tint.

I also found that having the camera in auto WB helped avoid the embarrassment of forgetting to reset the WB before the next shoot .

Recently though I have gone over to almost always shooting in raw. This makes it easy to tinker with the white balance in post production for which I use lightroom 5. Again I leave the camera in auto WB as this creates a unique "as shot" option along with the standard and custom WB options.

I have to agree with David. My K3 produces excellent results in auto WB although I have not had it long enough to try it out in winter snow.

Glyn

I have an old version being the Sigma DC 18-50 F2.8 EX which I bought new in June 2006.

I wanted a fast equivalent of the kit lens to take out on early morning cycle rides and this seemed to fit the bill. All the early reviews suggested that it was a great lens but I started seeing considerable CA issues in my results.

I think there are not very many detailed reviews of the Pentax version of this lens but a slightly later photozone review of the Canon version did have reservations about the CA.

Perhaps the later versions of this lens have addressed the CA issue but I think it would be worth investigation before purchasing one.

I still have this lens but have not used it for a long while. I am reluctant to sell it on with such a nasty CA characteristic so it sits on a shelf collecting dust. I will probably end up giving it to a charity shop!

I went down the DA*16-50 route, as a very early adopter, which was an uncomfortable journey and I am on my 3rd of these which after replacement of the focus motor, in 2010, now seems fine.

In the middle of this when I was getting really fed up with the DA*16-50 reliability issues I bought a Sigma 17-70 F2.8-4 HSM OS. This lens works very well although of course it is only f2.8 at the wide end. I still use this lens often preferring it to the DA*16-50 when going out on my bike. When using this lens I have to remember to make a decision over whether to use the camera or lens shake reduction and still sometimes forget to turn the camera SR back on when I go back to my other lenses .

Hope this helps.

Glyn

Are you serious? A projector lens for what?

If it was a blanked out hole I would expect it to be the same colour as the case.

I think its much more likely to be the IR detector for a remote. All my later Pentax DSLRs, and my Qs, have these here on the front grip but also have one on the back as well which I can't see in these pictures. However my old *ist DS only had one here on the front so perhaps this is still a feature of an entry level DSLR.

Glyn

I'm in .

Glyn

Because the Q7 has a bigger sensor but still uses the same lenses the coverage is consequently a little bit bigger.

As the owner of both a Q and and a Q7 I have found this occasionally advantageous. Certainly with the 01 prime I can take a smart-phone type hand-held selfie with the Q7 that I could not achieve with a Q .

With the release of the Q-S1 I expect that soon there will be bargains to be had with Q7s so it might just be worth holding off for a while.

Not by very much! 4 x 0.8 x 3mm quoted and measured by me as slightly less. The Q7, with the 01 standard prime, still easily fits in my trouser pocket.

Glyn

As the owner of a Q7 the Q-S1 just looks largely like a cosmetic upgrade.

As such I'm afraid that I will be sticking with my lovely black Q7 which looks like a miniature, complimentary, version of my K3 .

Just for completeness I also own a black and a white Q but no Q10 which again I thought was, once the Q had updated firmware, just another cosmetic upgrade. These Qs, and the Q7, were bought at bargain prices from SRS (Many thanks Chris!).

On that basis if the Q-S1 is going to provoke further bargains with the Q7 then I would have thought the Q7 would be a much better buy.

Glyn

I find that now I tend to shoot in raw that the lens model information is removed from the exif in LR5 when exporting jpegs. I have to go back to the raw file to check what lens was used but even then some lenses defeat the exif readers. For example some of my Sigmas and the Samsung equivalents of Pentax lenses seem to be a particular challenge.

I guess this will also create a challenge for anyone tasked with trying to make the gallery exif automatically display the lens name.

However I always do try, where the information still exists, to add the camera and lens information to everything I post in the gallery or enter into the competitions in this site.


Glyn

Oddly enough I had a similar problem with my K3, running the latest, V1.10, firmware, at Farnborough on Friday which was also a very hot day peaking at around 30c.

In the middle of shooting a sequence of an aircraft I particularly wanted to capture the camera just stopped responding to the shutter button. I turned it off and back on again and it just stayed the same. So under pressure to get it going again I quickly slid the battery out & in and it started to work again. It did not though seem to change any of the settings. I was shooting in raw+jpeg and I have not had any problems with it since.

I did not think it was temperature related. I just assumed it was just another of those occasional lock-up problems that I have had with all my Pentax DSLRs from my K20 onwards. It was just a bit frustrating that it happened at a very inconvenient moment .

When I got home I did though have to put some effort in getting the factor 20 sun-cream smudges off the camera and lens control surfaces .


Glyn

Looks good. Glad you got it to work.

Glyn