Well it does, and it costs a lot more as well.

I understand that it is much more difficult to make consistent large sensors and the failure rate becomes very high thus making the process much more expensive.

Then the cameras also have to be bigger but also the lenses would need to be bigger and they would be very expensive also.

Going for a smaller format has enabled reasonable, even cheap, price levels to be achieved and remarkable advances in lenses to be made.

Now that we have ultra-wide angles at reasonable prices I'm not so sure it matters any more.

The real advantage might be lower noise levels from a larger sensor with larger pixels but there would not necessarily be much increase in MP count.

And then a new range of lenses would be needed, so all in all I think it's pretty unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Pentax will certainly have a marketing budget, but their idea of how to use it to best advantage will be theirs.

Quite a few camera manufacturers were missing from Focus last year, including Canon, Pentax and I think Fuji and the whole event was instead overflowing with companies wanting to sell photo books.

I know that exhibition space is frighteningly expensive, so all companies will look very carefully at whether or not being there will make a difference to them.

It's always interesting though and well worth a visit.

You should be able to buy the Pentax batteries at £45 easily and maybe at £40.

I have now noticed that Amazon are selling the genuine Pentax battery at £32.95

1500 mAh and 1620 mAh

Indeed so, but would they have jumped so quickly to put matters right if it had been an unbranded battery in someone's computer?

All this ignores a few points. The NP400 and the Pentax battery are different specs, there are a lot of counterfeit unbranded batteries around that can be dangerous and if a battery does cause a serious problem it is likely to affect the warranty.

I doubt very much that I will ever need to buy another Pentax battery for the K10D (apart from the one spare already purchased) as the camera will be upgraded long before the batteries give up.

However, as with all things, we are all free to spend our money as we wish!

D-FA is a digitally designed lens with an image circle suitable for 35mm film. Tha macro lenses fit this category.

DA lenses are digital designs with an image circel suitable for APS-C sensors.

Digital design implies improves coatings for the rear element to reduce reflections from the shiny sensor and telecentric design where the exiting light rays are as parallel as possible.

There's one way to find out...

I think f11 will be f11 in every respect, but I hadn't really thought about that one before.

However, seriously, the answer can be found simply enough by trying it out and seeing what happens.

Any volunteers?

Or would it be more appropriate to use flash? I don't normally like flash, but it can be useful in some circumstances.

The alternative can be to up the ISO and this works very well with the 16-45mm. Or the 50mm f1.4 if light levels are very low!