Thinking of getting the K3, I enquired at SRS a couple of weeks ago about PXing my K5IIs. The offer including the bonus was a good one, but on reflection I am inclined to keep the IIs as a 2nd body because it is a lovely camera and virtually new. This led me to wonder whether I could exchange some other camera and still get the bonus. Srs has just confirmed to me that they will take any camera, working or not so I have in mind giving them my old Pentax Optio 330 which is currently acting as a paperweight. If I do this I shall effectively be getting a rebate,without having to apply for it later.

An amazing photo and an example to us all. I have this lens and I think I must now make better use of it!

I like the mood and the proportions of the shot, but I want to see the mountains in greater prominence and I think that a greater degree of telephoto might have helped. I have just returned from Alaska where in some places there were similar conditions. I found myself using my 55-300 quite a lot. I think that when you see a picture like this, the brain tends to concentrate on the most interesting part -ie the mountains and the mists around them. The camera has of cause no brain to speak of,and unless one compensates for this by emphasizing the salient features,( in this case using telephoto to make the mountains more prominent) the end result can be a little flat. You would still have the sea but rather less of it and you would probably have to try a different crop. That is my two pennyworth!!

Just back from Alaska. I took my 18-135 which gave me WR insurance and you will probably need it there. I also made a lot of use of my 55-300 not only for wildlife, where it is indispensable ie eagles and bears if you are lucky, but also for landscapes. We were driving in the interior and I found that for a lot of the time one wanted to capture the mountains without emphasizing the immediate foreground which a WA lens will often tend to do. I also had the DA 15 and 21 in the bag but did not use either to any great extent - just the DA 15 where I had a really good foreground. I find in many ways that landscapes are more realistic when taken with a degree of telephoto. If I went again, I think I would again take both zooms and maybe also the DA15 for occasional use. This combination avoids a lot of lens changing.

Absolutely brilliant - what lens did you use please?

I have a feeling that the continuous focusing is slightly better than my K5 used to be. Attached is one of yesterday's triathlon which came through my village. I use the SEL mode and tried to track the cyclist for a couple of seconds before pressing the shutter and that seemed to work very well. A couple of weeks ago I was at Goodwood where there were some motorcycle aerobatics and used the high speed shutter mode. The first shot in the series usually did not focus but the camera found focus on the others in the series and it was striking to me how the viewfinder image turned form a slight blur into something sharp.




I do however find the focus to be the weak spot as earlier this week I took a landscape at 1/125 and got an unsharp picture which I can not explain. Photome told me that the image was stabilised. This was a problem which I had quite often with the K7 and to a lesser extent with the K5. In other instances I think that the red focus point may not be as accurate as it appears to be. As far as action shots are concerned I am getting more keepers than on the K5.

Interesting but I guess that is precisely where you would expect to find it. It would be even more interesting to know whether the original K5 would have had it too as I found some moire in in one of my K5 pictures before I got the IIs. I found that by tweaking the colour channels a bit I could minimise the moire but did not succeed in removing it entirely. On the other hand you have to print quite large and look very closely before you would notice it.

These are superb car pictures, but I would have preferred for the car not to compete with the rather complicated building background. However that is what your friend wanted so he ought to be very pleased.

Miles

I must say that I find this style very pleasing but as a camera club member I have found that styles such as this (I have often practised some more extreme ones!) are a high risk strategy some judges like them but others hate them and dismiss them out of hand. I have found that camera club competitions do not always encourage experimentation, but as we always tell ourselves - if you like a picture, it is a good one and if the judge likes it, it is a bonus!!

To Smeggy,

I may well upgrade now unless I think better of it over the weekend. I have reached an age at which there is a lot to be said for enjoying new thngs now rather than putting them off. If a new 'all singing and all dancing' model is announced, I do not think it will be before late summer or autumn and it will not be available for some time after that. If I were to decide to go for that, I think that I might keep the K5IIs as a second body rather than trading it in.

To JohnX

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3490857

This is the link to the DPR discussion. I have to admit that I had just returned from the Wetlife Reserve at Arundel and had been using my 55-300, so the poster who mentioned lenses ( awaldram) has a point in that there are better lenses for birding. I am not really a birder otherwise I might have acquired the Sigma 150-500, but I feel that I would not make very much use of it and I really do not like heavy lenses much anyway. My comments on AF, however, really apply across the board to other lenses too.