I've done a very quick scan of this and they seem to be discussing a phenomenon that they have described as shutter blur. They do stress that this is not something that is pecular to Pentax cameras, although they used a Pentax to demonstrate it.

The hypothesis is that the movement of the shutter causes an equal and opposite movement in the camera body that causes blur. The effects of this are seen most obviously at ultra wide angles (10-12mm) and 1/100 sec or so shutter speed. The faster the shutter travel, the bigger the effect. Therefore, the K7 will show the effect more than the K20D as the shutter traverses the sensor gate more strongly.

This effect is independent of other vibration effects, which are insignificant.

Turning SR off does not improve this.

Logically, the movement of the shutter must cause an equal and opposite movement of the camera, but traditionally it has been accepted that focal plane shutters are virtually vibration free. Leaf shutters must also create a vibration, but this has always been considered effectively zero.

My suspicion is that we can now measure so much, so accurately, that we are finding new defects to worry about. Cameras are precision objects, up to a point, but not totally 100% efficient.

This seems a bit like the front and back focusing issue - something else to worry about that has never been seen as a problem in the past.

For the shutter vibration, a sturdy tripod apparently cures it totally, for the front and back focusing I guess it's always been there but masked by DOF and the fact that we waited hours/days/weeks to see the images anyway and just assumed any out of focus ones were our fault!

This is all the ultimate version of fellow photographers who when asked "What sort of pictures do you take?" would usually say, "Well, I'm doing a test film at the moment..."

Less worry and more fun sound good to me!

The *istDS is a very nice DSLR, but the electronics move onwatds and the later products produce better results.

Having said that, I still use images shot on the *istDS and they are perfectly acceptable. The K10D was better. The K20D was much better.

200 ISO is the "native" ISO for these cameras, so I use that wherever possible. Setting 100 ISO brings electronics into play to adjust the expoosure, so nothing is gained. In practice you should be fine using 200 or 400 ISO.

SR is such a boon that I think this alone justifies the use of the K200D.

If Pentax wanted to produce a high-end compact, perhaps with an APS-C sized sensor, then I certainly would not discourage them.

With compacts I think we need to think very carefully about what the objective is.

I always carry a camera and for this purpose a very small compact is needed. I use the I-10 for this, chosen for its looks (I admit) but also for its sensor-based SR. The results from this are excellent, but it does need skill to make the most of it. This mostly relates to handling issues with such a small camera.

An all-round camera that can equally well shoot flowers or distant wildlife would be the X90. Very versatile, capable of most things albeit it slower than a DSLR. This sort of camera can be very, very useful. I am tempted, not because I need one, but, again, because I really would like one.

The DSLR does the job properly, no problem with that.

But the high end compact? What does it do? If it is a carry anywhere camera, probably without a zoom lens, it is neither versatile nor compact enough. It needs a case and at that point you might as well have a small DSLR such as the K-x in a small case. The DSLR will give better quality.

The cost will be very high, because of the way they are made and the low turnover, but the quality isn't as good as we might hope. Time and again testing reveals the shortcomings of even some very expensive kit.

My conclusion is that, although there is a market segment for such cameras, they aren't for me.

You seem to have your exposure sorted out, which is great.

A tripod would have made all the difference here, making the shots crisp. If you did use a tripod, then a sturdier one and/or use of the 2 second timer to ensure no vibration occurs.

Seeing it was some way back and long forgotten, bringing it back to the top of the comments wasn't really necessary either....

It's gone and done with now.

As it's like the wind here it can't really be the site - maybe it's the route that you're being made to access it from at the moment?

Try rebooting the router and see if that cures it.

The ubiquitous 135mm f2.8 lens was available from just about every manufactrurer who made a lens and every seller who stuck a label on...

Typically 4 element lenses, the Pentax one may be four or five elements depending on the type and will certainly colour match the rest of the pentax lenses much better.

Considering the low cost of all of them, buy the Pentax is my advice.

Check what Photoshop has logged as your Scratch Disk. This is the memory of the hard drive that it uses after all the RAM available has been used. You can allocate a second hard drive to be the scratch disk, which is the best solution.

Also, check what percentage of RAM can be used by Photoshop - it could be set to as little as 55%. I set mine to around 70% of the 3GB of RAM available. Don't forget, Windows needs RAM to operate as well....

It seems a bit futile to moan about something that hasn't happened though!