If things are astray, no point saying how wonderful they are, it doesn't help anyone. On the other hand, no point being utterly cruel about it and thoroughly discouraging someone.

Nigel is made of sterner stuff and returns with some stronger compositions. The penultimate one is the best arrangement, with relevant foreground that remains sharp. The depth of field (DOF) covers the whole subject, so the aperture is a good choice. I think I would have moved the deck chair, or at least rearranged my position to exclude it.

I also enjoy the garden wall shot, although again the colour is way off. But the composition is excellent and it shows off an interesting bit of presumably kitchen garden wall.

Colour is still a problem, yellow being the order of the day. I'd also watch for large foregrounds that are outside the DOF, especially when they are just picnic tables.

I understand they will also act as normal SD cards, 16GB in this case. Only the K-3 will be able to access the other features.

I too prefer to wait till the price settles, have to really as it means new cameras for me and Sue every time.

So the K-5 IIs would be my choice - the price is already settled quite nicely I think?

The thing that bothers me particularly about your outdoor shots is that the colours are quite bizarre. It doesn't have to be this way because somewhere you posted some interior flash shots and the colour was perfectly normal on those.

I think a useful exercise would be to set your camera to JPEG and sRGB and Normal colour style and shoot a whole day's photography. Use AWB or Daylight. After that, see what the camera thinks colour should look like and you'll hopefully see how far adrift your exterior shots can be.

Hope that helps.

No hate mail I'm sure, but what a shame you've had such a troubled experience with such a nice camera. I'm pretty sure we've looked into this one already on the forum so I won't start the process again, but feel free to link to the other thread if you know where it is.

Please note that we're not allowed to link to competitors except in the limited circumstances detailed in the Terms of Use. So link section removed in post.

Fair enough question. I would talk to the customer and find out what sort of photography they were interested in, whether or not they were an outdoor person, whether or not they had a serious hobby tied to the photography, such as birding.

Then I would let them handle the cameras that I thought best matched what their interests and requirements were. Including the things that they hadn't thought of.

The hope would be that the final choice made would be found to be a good one for them and next time they would come back again.

Just try to avoid aiming comments at individuals.

It's worth remembering that assimilating skills can be easy for some but can be very difficult for others. It's also worth remembering that this is a Classified Ad and all these comments are off topic.

The problem Nigel is that the histogram needs understanding. A largely black scene, for example, will have a histogram skewed to the left, and this is where it should be. But how do you know how far to left it should be skewed? How do you measure the actual pixel distribution?

The answer is you don't. You meter accordingly and use -2 stops EV compensation. Or whatever adjustment experience suggests. Because we know what the sort of scene we are looking at will need. We get to know by practising. If necessary, at first bracket a little and see what difference it makes.

As regards metering in the centre of the frame, well you don't do this either. You tie the exposure to the focusing point and use centre spot only. That way, you are taking the reading from the point you are focusing on, after which you recompose and shoot.

But mu advice is not to do what I do. My advice is to understand the principles of exposure and then choose the techniques that best suit the chosen working method. That could be way I do it, but there are other equally valid ways.

No need even for the histogram. The temptation these days is to stop and look at images and even histograms when the better option may well be to make the judgement and carry on shooting. Do the checking at the end when the moment has passed and the shots are in the bag, or maybe once half way through if we need reassurance.

Constant checking is a guaranteed way to miss the action.