I use the K7 a lot for video and I find it excellent. I'm not doing any more than family days out, but I enjoy making it all interesting with editing in Sony Vegas software, so appreciate the high quality available. For more creative work we have our member richandfleur in New Zealand setting setting the pace with his K30, although I think he may be having some camera issues at the moment ... I believe that us K7/K5 series users may be at an advantage to an extent with our 'mechanical' sensor shake reduction, which works beautifully for video

My main recommendations for Pentax DSLR video are:

1. Use a stereo hotshoe microphone

2. Use SR but keep movements very limited - slow pans and zooms are ok ... Try and take alternative views of the action and use cuts in editing (keeping the soundtrack from one file throughout)rather than move the camera around to follow things.

3. Use manual focus and a lens with a long 'throw' to help with smooth and more precise focusing.

4. You don't have 'RAW', the .avi files are equivalent to photo Jpegs, so uts important to set up the camera custom image settings exactly, more so even than for camera jpegs, because video editing software cannot make the same range of high quality adjustments as the likes of photoshop, so its important to get exposure, contrast, whitebalance and saturation right as shooting because that's how you get the ultimate quality out of the camera.

Good luck, looking forward to hearing how you get on. I find shooting Pentax DSLR video great fun, and even more so when it all gets onto the computer and you start to work with it.

Andy, its a pleasure to look closely and offer opinions when the photographer has made a real effort and put his/her mind to it as you have here. I congratulate you on finding the inspiration to make the effort and 'do it properly ' with all the gear. It is so rewarding even if there are things to remember for next time.

when you make the effort and get technically high quality images there's more to work with in tweaking, so I think you will find the small adjustments suggested very easy and your files will respond well to these edits.

This is a very interesting set and a great mixture of locations. Your viewpoints and exposures have all taken advantage of the natural conditions very well indeed. Favourites for me are 7 & 8 because of the nice distribution of elements in both, natural tones in 8 and I also like the mono. A few ideas :

1) The yellow tones from the WB setting are a bit strong on the rocks and sky on the left side of the photo - this in fact creates an uneven looking WB with the right hand side, so I'd selectively lower yellow saturation on the left areas

2) Theres some odd luminous blue / cyan on a few of the rocks - probably the result of over-keen saturation boosting.

3) Opposite problem to No 1, here you've got blue all over the cloud shadows - an easy fix with a selection on the sky, then desaturation on blue / cyan channels, then a pull up on 'Luminance' to restore brightness.

4) Looks good to me

5) Could reduce the highlights a bit on the clouds, and a small brightness reduction on the mid tones.

6) Looks good also, slightly unsharp, but I appreciate if handheld it was a big effort, so well done

7) & 8 as above my favourites, very nice indeed!

Its interesting how we can see differing effects from the same things ... I don't see the perspective or depth as coming from the dark shadows at all, rather through the DOF and receding detail.

For me the shadows equal an unnecessary distraction, in much the same way that they do in behind close-up & macro images where the light fall is very narrow.

I was thinking that that custom setting would still have some effect even on the centre point. I guess the centre is already quite strongly biased in the matrix pattern, but activating the setting would increase this bias even more, which could be helpful in certain shooting situations i was thinking.

I particularly like the good exposure control which is well optimised for the skin tones ... Do you have 'ae linked to af point' in the custom menu kh?

Are you still K10d now you've got a new camera? Great to see the K3 in action in oz, are you enjoying using it? The last two shots here are my favourites, the strongest from a really good set ... The skies are all beautiful and the exposures on the buildings all well managed.

A very rewarding subject and you've taken some very good images with an interesting perspective and depth. I don't think the far top of the shots, with the dark shadow areas, add much, so perhaps a haircut at the top would be better, or when shooting, pointing down more to exclude it. Looking forward to seeing more from this meadow.

Yes, you could use this location for practising composition in preparation for a coastal aerial photography flight! ... And I guess you could also practice beach detail compositions while on an aerial photography flight.

But really Alan, don't you like that great wide expanse in the last? And it does have a couple of cows ... I thought you love your wildlife!