The red square shows only which focus point is being used and manual lenses will use only the centre one.

The green hexagon is the only true indication that accurate focus has been achieved.

EDIT: There is also an accompanying beep if you have it turned on. I don't, so I forgot about it as an alternative confirmation.

I think it's fair to say that almost all zoom lenses produce their poorest results at the long end of their zoom range.

For top quality wildlife images, a top quality prime lens will produce the best results.

That said, some members here have shown some remarkable images of wildlife taken with zoom lenses.

Skill and opportunity plays a major part in the quality of the final image.

Well, the Coot in your Coot shot is undeniably a Coot. The bird I was referring to in the Heron pic is actually unidentifiable to me, but Coot or Moorhen, it matters not.

What matters, to me at least, is this completely ambiguous and unquantifiable phrase "100% crop". It means nothing, not to me anyway.

If you were to crop an image such that only one pixel was left, is that still 100% crop? I have no clue.

If, on the other hand, one expresses a cropped image as a percentage of the full image . . . that makes a lot more sense to me, but is more difficult to establish.

Now that, I understand. If 100% crop means a selection of an image displayed at 100% size in photoshop . . . it was my understanding of this often quoted phrase that was at fault all along.

Welcome.

The K20D's image quality, dynamic range, and noise handling are significant improvements over the K10D.

[quote:3496ace15f="SteveT"]I was referring to the moorhen/coot in the full sized heron shot.

Rule of thumb is to use a minimum shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens to minimise camera shake. 300 mm = 1/300th sec. You can of course choose slower speeds if the camera & lens is supported by a tripod/branch/rock

And I wrote f8 - f16. These ball park apertures are necessary to get some depth of field.

I suppose the bottom line is if the lights bad, wait for a better day. If not, you have only three variables, shutter, aperture, and ISO. Use them to the best advantage.

I have never understood this description. If you had included the foreground moorhen in your crop, would that be described as 100% crop too. If so, the description is meaningless, as I have always understood it to be.

Your crop is actually about 1% of the original, and I find that much more meaningful and much less arbitrary.

If you've got to crop to 1% of the original . . the original ain't big enough. Get closer.

Shooting at 300mm probably requires a shutter speed of at least 1/500th/sec (you might just get away with 1/250th on an SR equipped body) and an aperture of f8 - f16 would be ideal.

To achieve those settings in failing light is a big ask of any lens and your only real option is to increase the ISO to 800 or 1600. Shadow noise might then be a problem.

Experimentation is the key.

The amount by which you've had to crop the heron pic for example, is unlikely to produce a satisfactory image IMHO in any event unless you are extremely lucky.

They do come up on ebay occasionally. Expect to pay anything from £180.00 upwards for a decent one.

The manual lists the lenses that are unsuitable for use with the 1.4X-S and 1.4X-L teleconverters. I haven't digested it thouroughly but there are some wide angle lenses that are also unsuitable for use with this T/C.

My recommendation is to look out for a SMC Pentax-F 1.7X AF teleconverter. It has the advantage of turning MF lenses into AF. The image quality is exceptionally good too.