We only upgrade as needed, so the K-5 has to stay at present. I might like to have a K-5 IIs, but our buying point is at the end of its life cycle, when the price has dropped as low as it's going. Or we wait, depending on circumstances.

One of our friends uses very basic digital cameras, an old Kodak till quite recently, and he produces amazing images. He has imagination and creativity that just bursts out of his photography. The camera makes no difference to that.

It only gets odd when people are being a bit obtuse about it though.

Who told you that wasn't allowed? Do you have an old Chinon K mount camera with a sticky mirror? If so, the answer to the question is "probably not".

Are you possibly over-thinking this and expecting problems where there are none?

What makes you think that we don't discuss K mount items on the forum? The forum is full of discussion of K mount gear, because it's Pentax related.

Otherwise, how could we discuss Manfrotto tripods, Sigma lenses, Studio flash, Photoshop.....

I think you're misinterpreting what Pentax only means Alan, but a Ricoh K mount body would obviously be usable with Pentax K kit lenses of all makes, for example.

What isn't relevant are older Ricoh compact cameras, which have no Pentax-relevance at all, any more than an Olympus Trip would have. or a discussion of TLRs, totally off topic. Or someone extolling the virtues of Canon full frame DSLRs, etc.....

Hope that clarifies it for you.

The term "kit lens" has almost become synonymous with "low cost" but one very famous kit lens, the 43mm f/1.9 Limited, was far from low cost. That came originally only with the MZ-3, as a kit.

No, we're not aiming to cover historic Ricoh products, only the new Pentax Ricoh ones.

The previous products are not Pentax related, apart from any K mount lenses of course, but this section is not for that.

The car in the second shot and the sky in the third are the worst parts. It looks like over-processing to me. If you were set on Natural and the WB was even AWB these shouldn't be that severe. The grass is good, so exposure in the shadows is OK, so maybe there's been some over-exposure as well. The brightest areas do look clipped.

Solutions? Better exposure control - I use -0.5EV routinely, Daylight WB and Natural. That seems to do the trick.

Language sir, language...but an example would be good so we can see what the problem might be?

A couple of shots from a photo shoot with our friend Liz, earlier today. This was Sue's idea - dropping the beads for Liz to catch. The studio flash doesn't quite freeze them, which I preferred as it does show some sense of movement.

I'm moving this to General Chat, although there are probably better places for it....is there some Pentax related relevance to be gained from this thread?

It depends on the image, a histogram only shows you how many pixels there are at each brightness level. Now if this is an image of a very dark subject, the histogram should be all over to the left.

To learn how to use the camera meter, I wouldn't suggest starting with spot metering. Try centre weighted first. Take shots of various subjects, bright and dark ones, and use exposure compensation to take images at -1EV and +1 EV. Check the results carefully against the image and the histogram to see the effect. The try at half or third of a stop increments to fine tune how you like your images.

There are lots of good books on exposure and no doubt lots of simple web resources too. All worth a look.