It's the time factor that's always a problem for me - I can't guarantee that I'll be able to shoot something within the 2 week period. If I can find something I've done recently, I will enter it though.

If you buy some rechargeable NiMH batteries and a charger unit (they should be sold together for quite a reasonable price) you should find they last much better than alkaline AA batteries.

They will however need regular recharging as they lose charge even when not used.

If your camera will accept Lithium AA batteries, then even better and no problems with losing charge either.

Although the rules are being rewritten yet again with the new models, the general principle will be lower MP count = lower noise.

So the *istDS is less noisy than the K10D.

However, as the electronics improve also, this may well mean there are now lower noise higher pixel density cameras, at least it looks that way.

What I liked about the K-r was the sharp noise structure at the highest ISO. I could live with that and use it to advantage.

You can see the difference between cameras with the same sensor because it depends also upon the processing.

Fair enough with JPEGs, but also RAW capture is not totally free from processing either. The output from the various photosites has to be combined and mixed up to make a continuous image and colours have to be guessed and averaged by the camera.

Lovely vague statement there, but in essence what I'm saying is that the way this is all done will affect the final result.

It depends on the type of business. Some are really sharp and even OTT when it comes to communication. They don't want low seller ratings or negative feedback.

Unfortunately there are some buyers out there who have no concept of how to fill in the ratings. Take speed of despatch for example. If a seller despatches an item the same day isn't that a 5 star excellent performance? Suppose it goes missing or is delayed in transit - not the sellers fault but how many buyers really rate how long it took to arrive...?

I think as things get over complicated it spoils them. It was better when buyers and sellers simply left the feedback and that was it. Over-thinking systems is a dreadful thing.

Looks like a job for SRB Griturn?

I doubt that many companies have a battery division making batteries, but what I do expect is that they source them to precise and approved standards. And that they test them.

We bought our Dell monitors from out local computer shop and they were much lower in price that buying from Dell.

My comment about batteries bursting into flames was a generalised one about batteries. This can and does happen, but thankfully very rarely and not usually with branded batteries. However, excpetions again, because Sony had a batch of laptop batteries that were extremely suspect and some did burst into flames.

Now they had to accept liability for that, but if it had been a third partly battery then the sanswer would have been that you should use their batteries and not alternatives and they would have had no responsibility.

So when a battery leaks under warranty, it would be better if it's a Pentax one if we want a warranty repair of the camera!

Moved to Classified Ads.