As mentioned the Pentax battery has a higher rating of 1620 mAh. The original batteries can be found for £30-ish if you search around shops, eBay and Amazon. The last bargain I saw was only £25.

Individuals decide whether or not they want original parts or not, but bear in mind a cheap battery that leaked would not probably find much favour with a guarantee claim.

You're right, but only up to a point. What needs to be asked is whether or not a shot is exposed correctly to show what the photographer wants to be shown.

For example, let's take a sunset with trees in front. This could be exposed to show a dark brooding image, a bright subset with trees in silhouette or to show detail in the trees letting the sky become very light. Depending on what was wanted from the shot all three exposures could be "correct".

If the key issue is general average snapshots then the situation is different and any camera on matrix metering mode will try to produce something that gives an average sort of image.

There are whole books on the subject of exposure....

Not really. A value of 255 is pure white, in other words blown out highlight.

The object of the exercise of photography is to produce striking images and many of these do not obey such technical constraints.

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding as to what the histogram does and although it's a useful tool I very rarely look at it. If the image looks right, then it is right, regardless of the histogram.

Looks Ok on my monitor. How does a print look Cliff?

Blwyddyn Newydd Dha oddiwrth Sue and I to all our friends in Wales, in addition to the previous message to everyone!

That's interesting because it's not obvious as I'm looking at the image here.

It could be a flare effect from side lighting or it could be the white balance setting being off, although the latter would not explain why it would be down the edges.

I would try again, setting the white balance to Daylight.

This is a substantially grey image, so maybe AWB has been confused by it? I can't see any magenta bands on my monitor by the way, but are you referring to the magenta and green fringing down the sides of the vertical metal poles?

This effect is quite common in modern digital photography and is a lens abberation or sometimes a CCD effect depending on the lens used.

What lens were you using?

Moved to Your Photos.

Happy New Year to everyone!