In the standard view there is a blue bar on the top of the image, click and hold to move it anywhere you like.

If you are using a different view you can toggle the various boxes on and off using the tab key, but I'm not sure that you can decentre the image.

I would just go for a bigger monitor. We use 19" CRTs and that's a pretty good size for most purposes.

Yes they do.


Not true. All right as a joke, but it wouldn't make much sense as a business model.

That's assuming I am correct in who you are talking about...

Some people just like being destructive. I suspect they know what buttons to press, post something outrageous and just sit back and watch the fireworks.

The best defence is probably just not to take them on and don't reply to obviously inflammatory posts.

This thread has just brought to mind a little tale that can be told, not directly related to mattie's post, but vaguely on the subject.

I was watching a demo at a camera club in the 1970s.

Member A was demonstrating printing from slides, and accordingly had water baths, thermometers, an assistant with a jug of hot water, and he proceeded to give a long and arduous demo, eventually producing some not very sharp colour prints.

Member B was demonstrating printing from colour negatives and strolled up casually, filling a small bottle with his developer. "I usually pop this in my pocket," he explained, "and by the time I've put the negative in, composed and focused it's just at the right temperature." Without hurry or apparent effort he produced stunning colour prints.

There must be a moral to this tale, but I never forgot the lesson it taught me, and it's served me well ever since.

Perhaps we should have a section for anecdotes. Apologies for diverging from the subject!

It depends what you mean by a standard developer, as there isn't really such as beast. I'm not suggesting that you change developers to suit the occasion but rather that you would settle on a combination that suited your style.

An example - my favourite combination is Kodak Tri-X deveoped in Paterson FX-39. This gives very crisp grain structure that suits the gritty prints I like to make.

If I wanted ultra fine grain I would use perhaps Paterson Aculux, but this would be at the slight expense of edge sharpness.

A processing lab is likely to use a very high speed developer, maybe just 1 - 1.5 minutes development at most. What the effect of this might be is unknown without quizzing them about their precise method.

The development is so fundamental that it would seem a shame to give up that control. You will make more headway more quickly if you develop for yourself.

If you don't want to though that's another matter altogether.

The character of the image can be totally changed by different film/developer combinations.

Personally, I would retain control of that critical process. It may be a pain, but you will get better results than using a commercial lab.

To be fair, wildlife/sports photographers are already using something and that something is likely to be Nikon or Canon. If Pentax brought out a whole mass of telephoto lenses today then the established photographers would not change just like magic.

It will be a slow business to build the solidity of the pentax reputation before professionals are prepared to accept Pentax as a serious contender in this specialised area.

So, wisely IMHO, Pentax are earning sales and hence money in the mass market areas of photography and building steadily on a firm base. They will sell far more 12-24mm lenses than say 400mm ones.

Eventually the lenses will come, and who knows one day the choice of professional wildlife/sports photographers may well be Nikon or Pentax. But it will take time.

Not that I noticed.

I'm sure they will put it right, as soon as they can.

It looks to me as though they have been steadily re-investing as revenues have been earned from their new DSLR products, expanding as fast as they can to meet demand.

The majority of that demand will not be in long telephoto lenses that most amateurs only dream about but rarely buy, so I can understand that this particular area has not been the first priority.

The K10D seems to have taken most people by surprise as it has certainly hit the nail on the head and attracted more new buyers than could have been reasonably forseen.

I have had a long look at the Nikon DSLRs, and indeed the Canons, but the first thing I notice is the dreadful, poky little viewfinders.

In the case of the Nikon there is none of the Pentax elegance of design either. I am thinking of the fiddy AF/MF switch on the 50mm Nikkor, for example.

Of course, if long telephotos are what is needed, then at the moment it would IMHO have to be Nikon, unless of course a nice Pentax 400mm or longer lens came up second hand. There are Pentax long telephotos to be found, plus some interesting unusual zooms as well, but they are indeed very rare and very expensive.