I think the reviewers would have been happier had Pentax ditched interchangeable lenses and priced it £200 cheaper.

However Pentax will be picking up sales from people who do not read reviews, comparing it to the Sony and Panasonic ILCs in the shop, and buying it on size / looks. That probably helps Pentax's sales income, but the long term reputation of the company?

And it does not give us 'obsessives' the camera we want from Pentax. Sony NEX is a more obvious choice for Pentaxians as you can at least mount legacy K-mount lenses on it.

I must admit I rarely use the hood on the Tamron at all, the front element is very recessed. So yep if the Pentax is the same, it is kind of a non issue.

The Tamron is also a cintilla sharper wide open, slightly better FL for portraits, and the way the hood is implemented makes more sense than the way Pentax have done it (at full lens extension, the Pentax hood will offer no real benefit surely?

I am not just saying this because I'm selling my Tamron either!

Main benefit of the Pentax for me would be the SIZE.

Quite right Ken. But I think if you make a general query about an item, you shouldn't see this as 'reserving' it, if someone comes along and makes an outright offer. I can understand Alan's disappointment, but in his shoes I'd probably just shrug and say 'it wasn't meant to be'...

If these sad events do benefit 'Pentax the company', due to higher prices or increasing their market share, there will be more money available for r&d, and therefore better products, which could increase market share yet more, which could mean lower prices in the long term.

All wonderful, but I like no. 7 the most, closely followed by no. 8 - beautiful subtle colours and tones. Only thing that lets no. 8 down (slightly) is the band of exposed sand at the bottom, which I want to be a uniform width! OCD

It's not acceptable to have the images 'blown up' like that. They need to fix that ASAP.

Now I've had more time to play on it, I'm finding it much faster to navigate - you can browse via genre, equipment, or search through the artists. And the entire site doesn't keep reloading, like it used to.

The welcome page needs to have more wow factor - there are no images on it, just text.

Had a brief play with it... on the plus side, it seems much faster. However it's not much easier to navigate and - is it me, or are images being 'upscaled' to fit the screen when you view them, reducing the resolution?

I thought Peak were supposed to be high quality, have you asked them why you're getting poor results?

I use these guys, who are cheaper than Peak Imaging, but better than the high street 'snappy snaps' types.

http://www.snapsphotoservices.com/filmprocessingandscanning.html

Sample scans - 'large jpeg' at £5 for the whole roll of film (lots of grain because I used cheap film): http://www.flickr.com/photos/28055843@N04/5982827886/sizes/o/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28055843@N04/5982261057/sizes/o/in/photostream/

I love the shot with the pedal car, great colours in that heavy rain.