Look in the custom menu for Use of Aperture Ring and set that to "premitted" - then use stop down metering and it should work.

To be fair, when confronted with a huge pile of images, which will usually be at the very least of a standard, there have to be things that differentiate the winners from the non-winners. Not everyone can win.

The things that differentiate are the content value, quality, technique, etc., and images do separate themselves out into a pecking order fairly reliably. The difficulty lies more in the choice between the top images, which are often a different class altogether. Sometimes this resolves itself in that one person can be on a roll and produce several which are class leaders.

As marks are usually required, and a winner, judges have to select something. I doubt that anyone in the audience would satisfy all comers either!

Keep on entering, but be prepared for a few knocks before the pictures start to win. And quite soon they may well start to win.

It just confuses things, because the DOF of a 15mm lens, for example, will not change because you put something else behind it.

What does change is the the focal length required to give any particular field of view. Because we have changed lenses in the real world formats requiring shorter lenses will have more DOF. So smaller formats = more DOF.

Now purists will know that even that isn't strictly 100% true, but in practice it is what we generally observe.

K10D, why are you comparing both lenses set to 15mm?

The Q at 15mm is a 35mm-equiv field of view of an 82.5mm lens.

APS-C set at 15mm is equiv to 22.5mm

Full frame is a very wide 15mm

You are comparing the DOF of a short telephoto lens to that of an ultra-wide angle lens. Unsurprisingly, the wide angle shows more DOF.

Not need as such, no, but some seem to enjoy this sort of debate.

Anyone who wants a FF sensor can actually go out and buy one today if they wish. I won't be doing so, not because Pentax don't offer a product, but because I don't want a bulkier product that would have minimal benefit to me.

If Pentax ever produce one that is the right product then I'll want it, but at the moment I'm thinking more about the MX-1 and perhaps a WG-3, both of which could be useful.

A nice thought, but today's facts may be untrue tomorrow. History tells us this.

It looks like the RAW converter is seeing some xtra pixels that are not used for image making.

Samsung made the sensors for Pentax DSLRs for a while. There are other manufacturers. Toshiba? Kodak (as was, now another company).

Senosr manufacturers will make APS-C sensors as long as there's an economical demand.

After all, even valves are still made.

Just try to resist the slightly acid comments and then people won't react badly. It was enough to tell us that you have sold your lens.

Given the same MP on two sensors though, cropping the larger sensor would mean smaller prints or more interpolation.

The advantage of FF is more the larger sensor, which offers lower noise. However, the low noise of the K-5 and onwards is so good, then every FF improvement can be matched by APS-C improvement.

I think the OP has made a valid point regarding lenses, although APS-C means smaller lenses and those designed for the samaller formats will drop off at the edges just like their FF equivalents on FF, probably.