Apols if I've missed it elsewhere, but are there any reasonably confident views of when the new camera is going to be released?

Hi Lenny, can the bag hold a laptop? I'd assume it would require an accessory padded sleeve - I've had a look at the Billingham website but it's not quite clear to me how these bags are divvied up internally, although they do look pretty configurable!

I've been after a bag I can take to work but slip a camera into, I've not quite found that perfect blend yet!

Ta for comments, I'll check out some of those printers.

It sounds like inkjets are the most popular, has anyone tried a dye sublimation printer? They look pretty low maintenance and good economy per print, although the cheaper ones are limited to pretty much postcard size or thereabouts.

Hi all

I've generally sent my images away for printing to the likes of whitewall and as such we've only got a monochrome laser in the house for correspondence. I'm finding that I'm less inclined to spend much time editing or arranging if there's no immediate result, so I'm looking at getting a photo printer for home.

I know almost nothing about decent printers, is there a generally agreed 'starter' model or type that I should look at? I'm not keen on faffing with cleaning nozzles and calibrating etc, and I'm wary of spending hundreds on dozens of ink bottles that I may not use before they dry out. I'm also not sure what criteria would make a difference to choice of printer.

I noted Mitsubishi do a dye sublimation printer for a few hundred, and the paper an cartridge come as a set although the print size is strictly limited. Worth a go?
All advice gratefully received.

It used to be that using AF on MF lenses would activate trip focus (the shutter would fire only when the AF module thought the image was in focus). No idea if that's still the case, but it was handy for macro in particular - could just rock back and forwards through point of focus with the shutter held down and it would fire when ready.

I'lk eep an eye on the new body, if it does have improved AF then this might be a good upgrade. The lenses will take a while and quite a bit of cash to change, so if AF upgrades require both body and lens refresh then I'll perhaps have to wait!

I vaguely recall that way back Sigma would reverse engineer lens mounts to remove/minimise licensing fees, and this would sometimes cause weird issues with lenses that seemed alright on one body not behaving quite as expected on others. This goes back to mid 2000s so no idea if it's the case now, and the K-mount series isn't as proprietary as others, but a few older lenses might suffer a bit from this - my experience of sigma is that good lenses are really very impressive, but poor lenses can be notably poor.

Cheers to all for comments

Mike, you're not alone, I've never found the tracking/continuous AF to work to any degree of sophistication on any Pentax body or with any lens. The tracking on my M43 is notably improved, although I do note the the GH5 and the 100-400 are a lot more recent than my K3 and sigma glass - my good quality telephoto lenses are all quite dated.

I'll keep an eye out for a decent pentax telephoto, I've used sigma mostly as the bang for buck is very good but I'm increasingly frustrated by the inconsistency you note, so if Penatx lenses offer an improvement I may give it a try.

On a final note, Is it me or do DSLRs need a lot more attention paid to the AF compared to film? I really can't recall having these issues with my old MZ-3, although I didn't shoot much moving wildlife just due to the cost of the film!

Hi all,

I've recently been using a M43 system with a very nice Panasonic/Leica 100-400 lens, all very convenient but the digital viewfinder and the slow speed of the lens are a bit frustrating. Getting fast lenses on M43 is ruinously expensive.

I'm therefore looking picking up the Pentax gear again. Aside from size relative to M43, perhaps my only bugbear with my Pentax gear was the slow and inconsistent AF and issues getting consistent sharp focus - I could go out for a day and all of the images would have back focus or just general sharpness issues, which might not be as notable on other days but no amount of focus adjust in the camera body would seem to permanently sort. M43 just doesn't suffer this, despite only having contrast AF.

Accepting that some of this is undoubtedly user error, I'd still appreciate any thoughts on which body people have found have had the best AF performance - particularly continuous - and which has the most rock-solid, guaranteed lock-on in single AF.

For info, I've got a K3 and there is a K30 body I can retrieve once lockdown is over. My set of lenses include a sigma 70-200 f/2.8 and a Sigma APO 300mm f/4 which are the ones I use most frequently. Both are screw-drive AF. Interested to hear if KP, K3II, K70 etc are seen to offer any advances over the K3, or whether old lenses are prone to this sort of issue - recall a few sigma lenses had backfocus issues but think the affected lenses were different models.

All advice gratefully received.

Not Pentax specific, but some might find the humble bundle deal for photo e-books interesting:

link

eta: sorry, typo in thread title, should read 'Wiley' as in the publisher, not as in sneaky!