I like the foreground, the house and the crispness of all the detail. The sky doesn't look right though, it's all blurred and the two things don't seem to sit well together.

The chrome was anodised, not painted. The black was painted on brass originally, and is again on the MX-1. The later of course plastic started to take over and the surface was probably painted. It doesn't wear so nicely as metal finishes do.

I was impressed by the Pentax anodising process, it was actually better looking than the other marques of its day, even including Contax. But in its turn it wasn't as good as the unbelievably superb finish on the Voigtlander Bessamatic of 1959. Ultimately though the Voigtlander finish was too expensive, there is a limit to what the market will stand.

I think we need to be very careful not to fall into the Camera Club Judge Trap (not all are guilty) of being jaded from seeing too many photos of the same subjects. "This has all been done before" is not an argument in my book, because it could well be the first time a particular photographer has seen that subject. The real challenge is to look at it and decide has it been well done in itself, as if we are looking at it for the very first time too.

We are all surrounded by the same subject matter, so it's the individual way of seeing that will set our images apart. Keep going back time and again to the same place, dig deeper every time, really explore the subject matter. Learn to see. All very difficult for most of us and something to work on.

If you want to take one of the things suggested as a cliché, why not have an impromptu competition and we can prove to each other that we can see these things anew and that the cliché problem could be as much in the jaded eyes of the viewer as in the inspiration or not of the photographer?

Yes, that is just what they said they would do. Pentax for DSLRs, Ricoh for compacts.

It would be interesting to see how a replacement for the MX-1 fitted into that!

I've never seen one of these in the flesh, so to speak. Is the silver finish paint on metal or something else? It would nice to think it might be anodised as chrome finishes used to be, but I guess that would be too expensive now.

Well the images linked too are not that inspiring and certainly nothing in them that suggests that FF has been any advantage or disadvantage, but that's beside the point because we stray from the point.

Back at the dawn of time I think this thread was about the K-3 Silver edition?

It's versatile and the quality is great. My MX-1 travels everywhere with me.

Nice images!

RAW and JPEG also. For those shooting JPEG only, then the original plus the tweaked version.

Gallery>Competitions and select the Weekly Competition or Monthly Competition as appropriate.

The competition is up and running and I'm looking for images of insects, birds and animals in the wild, or if on a nature reserve, looking as if they were in the wild. So no fences, walls and other structures please.

A good example of a suitable nature reserve location would be the vast flower meadow at Caerlaverock, which abounds with dragon- and damsel-flies. That's just an example!