Let's not forget that there was a very long list of good points as well. For the stills photographer the negative points aren't really relevant.

Reviewers are allowed to have their opinions, otherwise they're not doing their job. If that's what the reviewer honestly thought, then those are his or her conclusions.

I have seen truly biased reviews elsewhere and that's another matter altogether!

There was no "K-r bashing" that I could see in their conclusions - in fact, it seemed a very fair appraisal.

In what way did you think they were bashing the camera, jules?

If we don't feel sympathetic to a post, why reply to it We're not here to snipe at people who ask a question. We all need to encourage people to be able to ask anything they don't understand without being worried that they'll be jumped on.

We want to be a friendly and helpful forum. A bit of tolerance goes a long way.

A shot from a photoshoot tonight at ADAPS. May I introduce you to Caroline:
[IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/johnriley1uk/020-Caroline-800px.jpg[/IMG]
Pentax K20D with SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm WR lens. Any comments are most welcome.

Some useful ideas there, so I've moved it to General Chat where it won't be eventually removed.

No, I didn't say anything like that. What I was saying was that it would be interesting to know if such issues have always been present in some models, but because information didn't circulate so quickly we would have been relatively unaware.

Absolutely, more information more quickly has to be a good thing. We are better informed, although there is in equal measure the potential for mis-information as well.

It took a long time for people to become aware that after leaving a film camera for some time the first shot or two would be blurred. Why? Because of the kink in the film where it left the non-tangential film trap on the 35mm cassette. This eventually led to the redesign of the exit on the cassette, but it took over 40 years before it was realised.

Take the issue of exposure errors with M series and earlier lenses - film cameras were the same throughout the 1990s and the digital models have the same problem still. In this case it seems that it's something that cannot so easily be addressed.

So the question was a reflective have we been suffering from BF and FF focus errors for years and just been dismissing it as user error? We've all had less sharp images from time to time...

I don't know about "naysayers" but it pays to be vigilant about the methodology of users. Some will be precise and obtain good results (that is, good in the sense of reliable) and others will vary down to the extreme where fundamental flaws are not even realised.

Add to that the increasingly widespread hacking of camera systems and the ability in later models to fine-tune focus and there could be quite a lot a variables.

I don't know what answer to this there could possibly be, but returning a camera for service people to deal with is one way of hopefully ensuring an accurate result. Otherwise, we may be better just doing our own testing until we as individuals are satisfied.

An example is the firmware upgrade. Some say it works, some say it doesn't and some say it's partially successful. It may be that there are other variables, it may be that some don't test properly, who knows....but in the end all that counts is whether or not our cameras focus accurately.

One thought is that this may never have been any different. No magazines have reported this as an issue, and it only becomes one at very low EV values. Before the internet, this would just not have circulated and it would have taken a very long time indeed for any issues to become common knolwedge. Are the same issues present in AF film cameras?

Unfortunately, waiting for film processing would mean that meaningful testing would be very laborious.

As it looks at the moment I'd be ashamed to sell it to anyone, so it need some TLC before I even think about it!

I didn't really relate to this image as a colour shot, so I used Channel Mixer to change the tones, Hue/Saturation to produce the sepia tone, Texturiser, Burlap to create the texture and finally resizing and sharpening. I then added a wide white border to simulate an en-print of the 1950s or 1960s.
[IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/johnriley1uk/018Mike-P.jpg[/IMG]

In the form of a camera bag of goodies that came my way today.

Pentax SV with Super Takumar 55mm f2 lens.
Optomax preset 135mm f2.8
Pentax clip on exposure meter, round type
Pentax 105R compact
Contax rangefinder camera with Sonnar lens
Various filters and lens hoods

All in a bit of a state, but working. So now the job of cleaning it all up and we'll see what it's like!