But the batteries are not £50. They were available from Amazon for around £33 last time I looked.

The next competition will not need Admin to actiavet it, so there will be no delay apart from waiting for the winner of this week to respond to an automatic e-mail notification.

We shall see hoe it works out, it looks as though it will be fine. Now to think about the modern world!

Fair point, but the Pentax Li-Ion batteries in the K10D and K20D do have a specification that is different from the batteries that many people are buying as an alternative. The batteries also fit perfectly and are made to a high level of quality.

Pentax may not make them, but they do choose their supplier. The label that is just stuck on also fits perfectly and doesn't peel off!

I have seen plenty of photographers struggling to make non-marque items fit. The most scary was someone using a kitchen knife to prise a Microdrive out of his Canon G3.

After spending good money on good kit I don't begrudge buying the proper Pentax accessories.

We have three Pentax batteries each, but frankly we really only need two. One battery lasts pretty much a week on holiday anyway. Of the six batteries we have two came with the cameras, two were £40 each including shipping and two were £32.95 each on offer at Jessops.

These are superb images. Very well done.

Never, ever, look at the Sun through a camera, not even with a solar filter. They can fracture without warning.

The advice I read was to project the image of the Sun on a piece of card and view (photograph?) that.

The new thread of competitions needs Admin to activate it. I have asked them to do so, so it will appear very soon. All future comps will roll forwards automatically, so in future there will be no delay.

If needs be I can now create one that activates instantly, but we don't want two going at the same time!

Please prepare your images and soon...soon....

Well it was, but without going through the whole process we couldn't get to learn what to do. It seemed a pity to waste all those great images on just a test, so I did the whole thing.

If not, I will generate a new competition later and he can judge it if he so wishes.

Competitions usually are judged!

Exactly right - it was just a test to show us what happens.

You still won the competition though, so very well done for that!