I see you used ISO200 for the picture - if you upped that to, say, 800 (at which point I think the K10D is still just about producing shots where the noise isn't too noticeable or oppressive) then you'd have an extra two stops of light to play with. Use one of them on the shutter speed to bring it up to 1/15 (reducing shake) and the other on the aperture to close it down to f/5.6 (which at a focal length of 23mm would have given you quite a broad depth of field). I'd then personally focus on the far edge of the street sign on the right to try and get it all sharp.

These new ultra-high ISO values are obviously the way the market is moving but for me (someone who rarely goes above 400) it's all completely meaningless.

So I'll take the £4500 too - I could add some really nice lenses to my collection for that and maybe have enough left over for a Leica X1

We live in interesting times

I'd be suprised if the EP-2 was smaller though and I really want something pocketable - now a digital XA from Oly...

I hope so - I'd love to hear some user reports!

I've been to a few weddings recently and while they've all been given (well, sold actually) DVD's of pictures from the day it's the printed albums that get dragged out so they can oooohhhhhh and aaaahhhhhh over the dresses, the flowers, the cake...

Maybe popular culture here in the UK is dragging behind Canada a bit in that respect?

Well, Ffordes will ship worldwide if you email/ring them and ask - now you just have to find the hood.

Yes, but if any of them had got hold of a K-x I'd have expected them to have shouted about it by now...

I think it will depend on the type of commercial photography you do. I can certainly see many (most?) periodicals such as newspapers and magazines gravitating towards online-only publishing within the next decade as economics dictate ever-smaller profits to be made from printed words and pictures.

But there are other outlets for printing that I think will remain unaffected; wedding photographers will still be expected to provide happy couples with printed albums of their day, fine art photographers will still require prints to frame and hang in galleries, product photographers will still need artwork to put on the sides of boxes, advertising photographers will still need to produce work for billboards. Even in a World where there are fewer magazines I still expect there to be a demand for high quality, glossy books!

In the future (well, tomorrow is the future after all) I just think it would make sense to tailor your portfolio depending on the type of work you're chasing - if it's going to end up on TV or the web then a multimedia portfolio is perfect, if you're still shooting weddings then nothing's really changed...

It's not yet available here in the UK so you might have to wait a while before anyone can give you an answer.

Welcome to the forum.

From how I understand things the problem is at the edges. The FA lenses (both Limited and non-Limited) were designed for a format (film) that is quite happy for light at the edges of a frame to strike at an angle. Digital (well, the sensors anyway) requires light to be hitting it straight on and the modern DA lenses are designed with this in mind.

The FA lenses work well with our APS-C sensors because they only record the central portion of the lens (which is still projecting light over a larger 36x24 area), hence we never get to see what sort of a mess the extremes are getting into. If the sensor size was indeed increased to "full frame" dimensions then we'd see all the softness and abberations that are currently hidden out of sight with the FA lenses, meaning we'd need a new range of DA lenses with a larger image circle than the current ones.

If Pentax were to compete seriously in the FF market then that range of new lenses would need to be quite comprehensive - meaning a lot of R&D work and money being poured into a product which, with the best will in the world, is only a very small niche in the grand scheme of things. Given Pentax's ability to shoot itself in the foot marketing-wise I fear a FF Pentax body would mean the death of the company as a whole.

As things stand APS-C is pretty much perfect. We have a great range of designed-for-digital lenses to choose from and those of us with older glass (I have a couple of FA Limiteds myself) get to use them with no drop-off in quality because we're only seeing results from their sweet-spot.