You have a choice with Pentax DSLRs of setting the AF to focus priority or release priority, so that may make a difference.

Pentax AF is actually pretty fast as far as I have found, and reputed to be more accurate than other marques, but very fast subjects will be missed more often than still ones.

Apart from the very high end cameras, the camera club members I talk to find plenty of gripes about Canbon and Nikon AF, especially focus tracking.

The grass may not be as green as you think.

There are reviews on here and at ePHOTOzine, as well as on many other sites. Pentax have many advantages, including fantastic colour reproduction and weatherproof bodies and lenses.

You don't have to jump in at the top end K-5/K-5 II/K-5IIs range as the less expensice K30 has weather sealing and is a rugged camera in itself. Just make sure you buy weather resistant lenses, bearing in mind you will be out at sea in presumably all weathers.

The place to start may well be the two WR kit lenses - 18-55mm WR and 50-200mm WR. There are kits available and a good place to start looking is www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk - SRS look after us all here very well indeed.

If you want to extend to 300mm the 55-300mm lens could be substituted for the 50-200mm WR, but the longer lens is not weather resistant. It is, howver, and excellent lens.

Hope that helps!

Competition results are now posted, and congratulations are due to our winner Jim-w and to all the placements and Special Mentions.

Many thanks to all who had a go with this project, the results were great.

It is true that there's something special about pentax colour, and the lenses themselves are surely part of that. On a practical level, if you keep to the same maker for all your lenses then whatever the colour bias of them it should hopefully be consistent across the range.

The K10D has lower resolution than latest cameras, so there is a limit on that. It produces excellent pictures though, and of the lenses you list I know from my own use that the 16-45mm works very well with it.

It just depends on the lens. Current lenses are made to a very high standard, only picked apart once we start zooming in on screen. Older lenses are also made to very high standsards, but not all of them are designed in a way that suits digital imaging.

However, even a technically poor lens can have its uses if we exploit its defects for visual effect.

I have used older lenses, many older lenses, but currently only use the latest AF ranges. The right ones can show all the beauties of their older bretheren.

Awaldram, I'll have to call that a stacked deck...

You may have lower overall light in your image, but you have a nice bright car to focus on. I focused on the dark car, the dark section just above the wing and wheel slightly to the right of the image. It was centre spot, focus, hold and recompose.

However, we've both probably made the point!

The comptition is now closed. I'll be selecting the winner and posting some comments in the morning.

Do they make you wait for six months as well?

Could have been user error, but how could we know.

Pentax, or JPS, can't remember which, do say updates are at user's risk and putting it right is chargeable.

The Q is the only camera I have updated, and that went fine. That was so I could use the adapter and any new lenses. The lens updates went fine as well.

The only other update done was done by JPS when they repaired my K10D.

I don't think generally we should be afraid of doing this though, but it is at our own risk if we get it wrong.

I suspect there will be more difference between the images of different photographers than between the two cameras on an A4 print. Of course it also depends on the post-processing and the amount of cropping and the printer and the amount of contrast in the original scene.....

What will make a difference is getting out there and taking masses of images, practice is everything.

Hope that helps!