There's a discount on accessories from SRS - I think 10%. The Servicing discount is 20% and available trhough the official repair house. Download a form to get this.

Don't forget the 20% discount on servicing from JPS. One repair could more than pay for the membership.

I'm not going to open a hornet's next regarding JPEG capture, but glad it's working well for you. It's what I use almost all the time.

I use +1 sharpening in camera and do the rest as a last stage in Photoshop, applying different amount of Unsharp Mask depending upon the final size and purpose of the image.

All digital images can benefit from some sharpening, but too much looks dreadful.

You are correct that minus means softer, plus means sharper. 0 is the default setting. Whether that means no sharpening at all or not I don't know.

You can opt for the camera to start a new folder for every day that you shoot, or to continuously count the numbers. It will create folder 100 and then ount up to 9999, after which it will create folder 101 and count up to 9999, and so on.

It is good practice to format a card in the camera you are going to use it in. I do this every time I re-use a card. It keeps the file structure in good order.

That's quite unnecessary Dave. Sarcasm doesn't help anyone.

We can all help by not mentioning spammers as then that makes another post that has to be removed, especially when people quote the spam. If you just ignore them they will be dealt with.

You need to make your adjustments in daylight, after which any really extreme conditions can be sorted in a number of ways. QuickShift and Manual focus are two alternatives in odd conditions.

When I say odd conditions though, they will have to be pretty extreme. Once it gets too dark for the AF to work properly it's really too dark to manually focus properly as well. One solution is an LED torch. These are very bright and can be used to illuminate a subject to enable focusing on it. There are always ways round things.

If it's too dark to AF then a tripod will presumably be in use anyway.

When shooting disco dancing at a wedding I had no problem with the K-5 locking on to the dancers, apart from now and again. The lighting varied enormously from quite bright to very dark, but the colour could be anything. It worked very well.

Do your tests again in daylight and see where you are at that point?

Did you use a solid tripod for this shot? To test sharpness of a lens, it's probably best to tripod mount and shoot a subject with plenty of detail in one plane. So, a brick wall is always a basic stand by subject. This will also show any distortion. For more detail, a newspaper pinned up on the wall will definitely show how much resolution you are getting.

To take up vrpan's point, I have no expierience of the K-5+50-135mm combination. That may well be a slow option, I don't know personally.

If we wanted a real test of speed it would need to be comparing like with like, so different camera bodies with their respective 35mm lenses, for example.

I have found the 18-135mm and 35mm f2.4 to be very fast when coupled with the K-5. Very much faster than the K20D, for example.

The K-5 doesn't use contrast detection AF in its normal mode (it will in LiveView) so I don't think that can be Chris's inference. CSCs do use contrast detection AF, so , like the K-01, will focus slower.

Thanks jhnpennington, it seems you aren't discussing AF speed, but something else entirely - that is, FF/BF. This is an area where we need to be careful about altering the settings, and the manual does advise to only change anything if absolutely necessary.

I would go back to basic principles and reset factory settings. Set the AF system on centre point focvus only and just look through the viewfinder and see where the lens focuses. Take photos to confirm, but most of the time the focus should be so close as to be absolutely fine. If it isn't and it's way out then there's always the possibility that you have a fault.

Always check focus in daylight. Also, it's worth checking that the dioptre setting is correct so that you can see what's happening properly. Point the camera at a blank wall or blank sky, defocus the lens and adjust the dioptre until the etched lines in the viewfinder are clearest.

Now your eye will be focusing on the focusing screen in a relaxed way at it's natural focusing distance.

Hope that helps, but if there's still a problem it might be an idea to check out another K-5 with your lenses.