We should remember that Pentax has been bought by a company larger than Nikon, who have indicated they want to shift away from their staple business of office printers (a market they see as declining) to consumer imaging (which they see as an area for continued growth). Ricoh have also been ambitious with their own imaging department, even though it has not been matched with great success. They are big enough a company to withstand minor knockbacks as they pursue their long term goal. This is good news for the K mount DLSR system they have just acquired!

I will read any mag not wrapped in cellophane (before putting it back on the shelf!)

If they're using FF models with pentaprisms, I'm sure focussing is a lot easier using the OVF, but if you're using a fast lens with narrow dof, and you have the LV facility, you might as well use it! But unfortunately it's a slightly cumbersome process, as Rodders describes

Of course if you shoot at f5.6 or above, yes the tiddly little OVFs on APSC cameras are absolutely fine

But who wants to deny themselves the joys of narrow DOF shooting?

(Edit - so many acronyms in my post, sorry!)

That's one way to get to your wisdom teeth I suppose

That's quite an impressive curvy wall. Slightly less so, the photograph!

I wonder if the problems at Sony might be contributing, perhaps they need to source the sensor elsewhere... (New Samsung 20mp sensor perhaps? It looks pretty good!) That and the Ricoh rebranding exercise.

Got it in one Stan. To quote Alan Partridge - 'This country'....

Hmm. I can understand why the parents would rather the birth mark be left in, but I don't understand their 'outrage' at the photographer's mistake. Request an unaltered print and move on! Why all the hysteria, who does it benefit?!

OTOH if that's a faithful reproduction of the photo, I would be pretty unhappy anyway. But presumably the photographic shortcomings would have been visible from the samples the parents viewed and they went ahead with the order so...

Well, taking a shot only takes a second, and if your derriere was already soaking, I would have thought it would have been worth risking another impromptu 'colonic irrigation'

(After all, people pay good money for that sort of thing!)

My point about moving left (slightly) was because the wall is distracting, but cropping it out would unbalance other things from this angle, such as that big shrub.

What a coincidence Frankie, we had that 'puffie' too - must be doing the rounds!

Well done on second place! This first is very nice - wouldn't change a thing. Lovely perspective. I do have some constructive C&C on the other two though - I wonder whether your other camera club members will have mentioned the same points?

Shot 2 - I find the colours over warm and saturated, and the tree house has a bit of a lean to it... is it optimally placed in the shot for the best composition?

Shot 3 - A nice idea but the section of wall on the right detracts from the composition for me - I think a shooting position slightly to your left, and avoiding including the wall, would have been better! I do like the diagonal of the fountains across the shot though, and the position of the clipped ball at the end of the hedge is ideal as the fountains 'lead' up to it.