You may not care about the brand name, but a subsequent buyer might. When selling it's a good idea not to project our own notions into the sale. A typical example is thinking that your buyer can't afford something. Buyers can be very surprising!

Going slightly off-topic here gentlemen! This section is for Classified Ads, please continue in the appropriate place....

I just wonder that you are so much basing all this on issues with your *istDS, which everybody is telling you may well be faulty.

Would it not have been a good idea to check this out first?

Personally I don't really follow a manufacturer's products because they are or are not becoming more popular. It's more a question of what suits me and pentax products have suited me very well for many years. I like the way they work and the elegance of their design.

I think what George said was accurate. Canon have lost market share. They are now No 2 in Japan, having been overtaken by Nikon. I have often said that if I didn't use Pentax I would use Nikon. A bit clunkier as things go, but the quality is there. Canon I have never been fond of.

Pentax have also increased their market share, more dramatically so I suppose if we could include the Samsung variants as well.

For hard facts go to the appropraite trade websites

Maybe not completely. It's always handy to have a backup camera for occasions when you don't want to carry bulky kit or maybe if you're not sure that you'll be taking any photos at all.

Taking a full kit everywhere all the time can be a bit of a burden...it is supposed to be fun!

I wonder if there are not a whole mass of people who buy DSLRs and are then disappointed in one way or another, simply because the rest of the workflow has not been thought out. DSLR images need after-work to get all the qulity out of the images.

Probably many would be better off with a Bridge camera. The images from these are much more print-ready and the built in lenses can cover from 28mm - 480mm (35mm-equivalent) without any need to agonise over lens choice.

I use one for eBay pictures, set at 3MP resolution. It works well and has good macro capability. It's not good enough for general use though, but then I need big prints.

So that's what happened!

A cable to the car battery housed in your backpack might just do the trick....

There was a review in AP complimenting the Nikon D700 on having a shutter lag of only 70ms and it just made me think how little we expect these days...

In 1959 the Compur-shutter SLR from Voigtlander (the Bessamatic) was well known for its relatively slow response time, because of all the necessary mechanical linkages. It took a lethargic 50ms to relase the shutter....

I can't remember the excat figure for the simpler Pentax Spotmatic, but I think it's about 17ms.

Interesting how we have progressed!

Let's go right back to basics. Focusing is done at open aperture where the image is brightest and the depth of field is smallest, so the slightest movement of the ficusing ring will snap in and out of focus. The eye is only fairly good at this so tests have revealed that the focusing position that we see can vary a fair bit from attempt to attempt. However, the DOF when the image is taken is usually more than sufficient to cover any slight errors.

If you are saying that you are shooting at f2 and the focus is in the wrong place then the first thing to do is get a stationary subject and put the camera on a tripod. Now try the focusing. If it is now OK then the problem could well be both the subject and the camera moving after you have focused.

Models move about a fair bit and so do photographers and at f2 there is no room for this. Also, don't forget that with a portrait the eyes are the place to focus. It's all in the eyes.

With an 85mm lens at faitly close distances f2 may well be too wide to get enough of the face in focus, so don't hesitate to use f5.6 or even smaller apertures, depending on the photographic style you want.

My suspicion with this is that you are shooting hand held and simply losing the point of focus by the time you have pressed the shutter release.