Done to death or not, it's still a great place for photography as you've very ably demonstrated!

Please don't link to or repeat spam posts because it perpetuates the problem. They will be noticed and removed, so no need to reply to them. When we do reply, they get a notification and that just encourages them to return.

The best thing to do with spam posts is to ignore them. They will be spotted and removed the next time a sweep of the forums is done.

In fact, the number of spammers getting as far as posting is vastly reduced compared to its worst of maybe 100 posts a day. Now it's a trickle, but whether or not any members notices them will depend on the time logged in and when the checks happen to be made.

It's being looked into and as soon as I know anything I'll let you know.

Some things are easy to fix and some prove to be intractable problems, or so time consuming that they keep getting "bumped" off the schedule!

I'll remind IT and see if they can have another look.

Be careful of wide landscapes. The distant scene will be smaller and without a strong foreground will just look far away and disappointing. Your 18-55mm is a good start and you may find it to be wide enough.

However, if you do go wider, watch the foreground isn'y empty and go in close to subjects for the most dramatic effect. The 12-24mm is rectilinear (straight lines remain so) and is a brilliant lens. The 10-17mm is a fisheye at 10mm, but gradually less so as you zoom in. It still bends lines at 17mm though, just not as much. It's a great lens, but if every shot is taken using it then it could get boring.

I would go for the versatilty of the 12-24mm rather than the 14mm or 15mm.

Hope that helps!

It's easy to assume that any price hike is unfair, but we have had low prices for some time now and the 560mm has been going down in price quite dramatically. Even at £4799 it is not as expensive as when first introduced.

I would suspect that a second batch has now been made and the cost has risen considerably as well as perhaps the sales falling. Those who were waiting for a 560mm will have bought it, so the initial flurry of sales will be over.

In the past, in a different field, I have come across many customers who felt that a price rise was ripping them off, but in fact the rise was inevitable for reasons of cost to the company or whatever. Perhaps support for an offer may have ended. There are many reasons. Companies do want to sell kit, so they will keep as competitive as they can. Pentax prices in general don't look out of step with the other major marques. How much do other makers' 500mm-ish lenses cost?

No politics please. Thanks.

That's a different issue Barrie, and there are no readily accessible figures that I'm aware of. Hopefully people only post when they have got something worth saying, so I guess that depends on what is going on in the wider Pentax world. In that context, we saw quite a bit of posting about the KP and no doubt something else will cause another flurry of activity quite soon. Hopefully more lenses!

It's interesting that you perceive traffic to be down, when in fact it's considerably up, and dramatically so. There are routinely 500 or more people online, whereas it used to be around 100 or so in the times you are thinking it was up.

As for the competition, a lively subject tends to result in a lively entry. The more obscure subjects do not do well. I would suggest something like "red" will get a much better response than, say, "The passion of life" which needs interpretation.

Everybody can join in with the competitions, and if we haven't done so recently then time to get JPEG to site and have a go.