My wife says the same thing.

Yeah. I guess the warranty should cover this but it doesn't sound like the easiest thing to demonstrate without some kind of proper testing method. "My battery only lasts X shots and other people's last for more" sounds kinda weak and likely to provoke a response along the lines of "battery performance may vary...".

I'll record how many shots I get out of each battery on the next charge cycle and avoid previewing images on the LCD to keep things equal and we'll see how that comes out.

It never ocurred to me before reading this thread but now I'm starting to wonder if I have a sub-par battery. I reckon I get around 800 shots out of mine. One thing I noticed is the third party battery I purchased actually lasts longer, but until now I just assumed it happened to be a pretty good third party battery and it didn't make me think anything was wrong with my Pentax battery.

The only other thing that occurs is that I shoot in RAW+ which could possibly be making a substantial difference as I'm sure most users tend to stick with one format or the other - in effect I'm making the camera save every image to my memory card twice over.

(Since plenty of K-5 users have had sensor stains and/or focusing issues I suppose I'm getting off lightly if my only complaint is a slightly sub-standard battery.)

I have a tripod mode set up but it's more an aid to memory than anything else. Somehow "switch to tripod mode" is just easier to remember to do than "turn of shake reduction".

I researched the various manufacturers lens ranges pretty extensively before I decided on Pentax, and from this I came to the conclusion that the in-camera shake reduction makes it cheaper to build up a collection of decent lenses. For Canon/Nikon lenses of equivalent optical quality tend to be more expensive due to the need for image stabilization. It's cheaper to buy third party lenses i.e. Tamron / Sigma too for the same reason - the Pentax versions for most of these are available without the stabilization option, which is cheaper.

My wife uses Canon and almost every lens option she's looking at is more expensive than the Pentax equivalent, the only real exception being ultra wide angle because an ultra wide doesn't really need stabilization. There are cheaper lenses available for Canon but they tend to be rated quite poorly in terms of image quality, whereas even the cheaper Pentax lenses generally score quite well in that respect. Bells and whistles I can live without... image quality is the most important 'feature' for any lens.

Sony DSLRs of course also feature in-body stabilization, but their selection of lenses at the more affordable end of the price spectrum seems to be extremely limited. There's a distinct bias towards more pricey lenses especially when it comes to zooms. Pentax may not have the largest range of lenses in the world but they do offer a pretty good balance on the scale of affordability.

Olympus are the only other DSLR manufacturer to offer in-body stabilization but due to the use of 4/3 sensors they're really in a different playing field compared to other DSLR manufacturers.

I'd be interested on what sort of settings you use as I get a lot out of my Pentax battery but not nearly that much! Do you have automatic image reviews turned off for example, as I imagine that could make a big difference.

My hands are fairly small (for a male) but I do find I hold my K-5 with the little finger under the body rather than on the grip (not that I had a K20 to compare it to, but with my wife's Canon 30D my little finger holds on the grip).

However I find I actually prefer it that way because while it isn't perhaps as 'comfortable', it feels like it gives me a firmer grip on the body overall. With a larger grip the only way a camera could really slip out of your hand is bottom first, but with your little finger supporting it underneath even that can't happen, leaving practically zero chance of dropping the camera at all.

I like it.

I find myself using multi metering most of the time, center-weighted sometimes depending on the situation, and spot metering only rarely. It's an approach that works most of the time as long as I have the time to think about it.

In a rapidly changing situation where I'm tying to react quickly to what's going on I often find myself not thinking about it sufficiently and therefore not making the necessary adjustments. I put this down to lack of experience really - the more I'm aware of it and the more practice I get the more I will learn to think on my feet and act accordingly.

I appreciate what you say about exif data, but in this case wasn't really asking for help as such, more just acting on an interest about people's opinions on what seems to be quite a divisive subject. In exposure terms I know exactly what I did wrong in the above photograph and I understand the technical aspects of exposure quite well, it's just applying them in practice I often have difficulty with because 'thinking on my feet' is not a strong point.

That's okay. I didn't really see it as a creative use myself as the time. The subject was addressing the audience (really an ad-hoc crowd of whoever happened to be around) 'ringmaster style' so he was pacing back and forth a lot, and I was rapidly moving about to try to get some different angles. Trying to get him against anything even vaguely resembling a clean background was proving particularly difficult. I failed to compensate for the light when I got to that particular viewpoint.

However, on looking at the image afterwards I found myself quite liking the effect. Though I find the blown out parts of his ear and beard a little annoying, I quite liked the contrast between one side of his face and the other and the way you can only partially see what the makeup looks like on the blown side. That's a very personal thing. I've always quite liked images that leave a certain amount to the imagination. I quite like the mystique of it all.

Of course, that is an extremely personal and subjective thing, as we are (not unexpectedly) finding out in this thread.