All someone has to do is set a competition brief that states images straight out of camera with no editing whatsoever. To set this competition you need to win one first...(or persuade some other winner that it's a good idea)

All things are possible.

I think everyone can be aware of the midnight closing rime and relate that easily to their own local time.

Whatever time is chosen will be good for some and less good for others, so the midnight deadline is as good as any I think.

I would have thought that the worst "offenders" in the photographic world would have been Olympus and Canon.

Olympus because they totally abandoned their OM series cameras leaving their users high and dry. I wouldn't be surprised if 4/3 went the same way, eventually.

Canon because they totally changed their mount, I think twice.

Nikon don't seem to be in the compact market so much now, as well as Pentax.

I'm not sure if the general buying public care so much what name is on the front of their P&S camera, or indeed buy the same brand if they go later for a DSLR.

The Pentax announcement hasn't been confirmed yet as far as I know and as I reacall it said future P&S compacts would be sourced from elsewhere, so the Pentax name may be on these cameras for some time yet. Perhaps they are just planning to scale down their in house R&D and manufacture so more resources can be applied to the DSLR range.

The main growth area is the DSLR and also the most profitable area is the DSLR. Plus, having sold a camera they can go on to sell more lenses for it.

At one time Pentax only made SLRs, admittedly in various formats such as 6x7, 645, 35mm and 110.

When I wanted to sort out the camera club's CD2 registration I just phoned up Adobe and talked it through with them.

They were very helpful and there was no difficulty.

So why not phone up the software company and explain what you want to do and see what they say?

As far as I recall SE versions of cameras such as the ME Super and K1000 have a different focusing screen.

The K1000SE will have a split image screen and a diamond-embossed rubber outer casing. Not many were produced apparently.

There were also a very few K1000 Gold cameras. These are extremely rare.

Perhaps you have the number one photographic accessory - eyes!

That may well be so.

I haven't found any problems with Pentax AF performance in any kind of light. It locks on quickly and accurately. I do use the centre point only, which makes life much easier.

For macro work AF is basically useless though and manual focus is far superior.

Sorry I can't be there, but good luck with the show Chris. I hope it's a great success.

Force? Hair dryers? I think this precision made lens might be a bit less precise quite soon...