There is focus confirmation. It's the usual Pentax green hexagon at the bottom of the viewfinder. What the reviewer probably means is that the indicators in the viewfinder that show which autofocus points are being used are black squares rather than illuminated coloured crosses. Some people don't like that because they aren't as conspicuous. Personally, I'm OK with it. And those points have never been for focus confirmation. That review on Amazon also says that the top display is difficult to read. Well, in spite of having less that perfect vision due to cataracts, I can read the display easily. Possibly not wise to give much weight to that review...

Steve

Presumably VAT takes care of £120 of that £720. Of the remaining £600, how many hours of skilled labour does it take to dismantle then reassemble a flagship DSLR? And that's before the cost of a circuit board. Then there's probably things like cleaning the sensor and replacing seals (even my watch gets a new seal if anything is done to it internally). Not to mention testing before and after reassembly. The cost of the circuit board might be only a small part of the total cost. A long while ago, someone in the motor trade told me how much it cost to fix the air-con in a Porsche. It was frightening. And by far the biggest expense was the labour involved in removing bits to get the the air-con then putting it all back together again. Yet another good reason why I've never wanted a Porsche!

Steve

Beach and sand = link ? No RAW, but you can take it in the water and shoot the children splashing around from close up!

Steve

What they say - an excellent set . And just what I needed to cheer me up after yet another wet dog walk on a miserable, totally grey day.

Is that first one a tripod-mounted selfie? And even if it isn't, how did you not leave footprints? Or is it an arch rather than a cave and you can walk to the other side without going through it?

Steve

If you're going to tinker with a mirror lens, it's worth having a look at this article about a common issue with the performance of these lenses and what can be done about it. What have you got to lose (apart from time and sanity)??

I'm not brave enough to do it to my fully functioning, fungus-free Tamron mirror lens!

Steve

Goodness knows what was going on with the purplish cast in the DA*300mm image or why you couldn't get rid of it. I hope you don't mind, but I've been tinkering with it in Affinity Photo and a very quick WB adjustment and small negative exposure correction does pretty well. Here's the result, original DA*300mm first, my modified version next, Tair original last.

DA*300mm original



DA*300mm WB modified



Tair



It's no doubt possible to do even better with more time and determination.

Steve

Interesting! Many years ago I put the DA*300mm on a *ist (film camera) to see what it would do. The results looked OK and, of course, no hidden tweaking by the camera.

Have you really been fair to the DA*300mm, though, as far as focusing is concerned? Surely it would have been a fairer comparison if you had used manual focus with the DA*300mm?

But the overall conclusion is definitely valid - for many things you don't need to spend mega-bucks on the latest lens in order to get perfectly good results.

Steve

Never heard of that problem with a K3iii before. I'm up to 5K actuations and not had any problems of any sort with the camera (or with previous Pentax DSLRs). Since yours had 1000 actuations when bought, it was presumably sold as used. I wonder sometimes whether low usage used items indicate that it had suffered a knock, drop etc. when with the original owner which hadn't caused visible damage and they moved it on before any internal damage surfaced.

Steve

This doesn't seem to have been mentioned on this forum before, so here it is: Affinity Photo editing software is now free. As far as I can tell, it's basically the same as what you used to pay for but now you don't have to pay. However, if you want to use its associated AI tools (and who doesn't??? ) then you do need to pay. They promise that your photos will remain under your control on your own computer and they won't use them to train their AI thingy. All this is apparently part of the mission and strategy of its new(-ish) owners, Canva. Find Affinity Photo with your favourite search engine.

It makes me wish I hadn't paid for the latest version a while ago and had just been more patient...

Steve

Which just goes to show that there's still a market for Pentax if you're selling decent kit at a sensible price in the right place and you're someone who people respect and trust. I'm pleased that you've found new homes for this lot. Hopefully the cash will find its way into other kit that will produce images which will continue to brighten our days as your Pentax images have done .

And don't forget that you can still enter the weekly competitions with shots from the past taken with Pentax-related gear .

Steve