No you are quite right! Happy for it to be deleted. I feel too comfortable bandying it around becuase I feel I may be a bit 'aspergersy' myself, although I haven't been diagnosed. One of my college friends had aspergers, and I think David Byrne?

That's not being an idiot - that's being a normal person who has seen a DSLR and wants one for better family pics, but doesn't necessarily want to get all asbgergersy about the technical side of it!

Hehe, Alan would definitely be a diehard Pentax man!

Yes and the point I am making is that a smarter AF system with more points and AF tracking will possibly help overcome this problem. Certainly more convenient than Victorian neck braces

This isn't new technology cos the Canon I tried was pretty old. I was shooting kids with it, and the AF points lit up all over the kid's face, and moved around when the kid moved, holding position perfectly.

On Pentax auto select AF, the camera's few AF points would just focus at random on the kid, the coffee table, Auntie Noreen's knee, etc, making it pretty useless!

I don't know what I was doing wrong. I would focus on the face (in AFS), recompose (to a half length portrait format) and take the shot. So so many shots were out of focus on the face. (I do like to shoot wide open perhaps I'm dealing with a narrower DOF than you are used to?)

But yeah, with any auto select mode the camera might have focused anywhere on the model in that circumstance, probably on the nearest part of the body.

What would be handy would be to select what you want to focus on with the centre point, and have the camera cling to focus on that point, even if you move the camera a bit or recompose, or if the subject moves.

I am hoping that is what has been implemented with the new tracking feature.

As the reviewer says, ' Why couldn’t I focus and recompose? Because then I’d throw off the plane of focus.' I think I've noticed similar issues when I employ the focus/recompose technique (which is my normal technique as I usually find manually moving the focus point too much of a faff).

I wonder whether the reliance on centre spot is more to do with the other modes just not working well enough? With more AF points and a better AF system, the better the auto select modes work better - I did notice this on a Canon I tried once, admittedly a professional full frame model!

Yes and everyone gets to squabble about those choices... that's the internet!

We had a debate about the K30-K50 progression... personally I think they had a great camera in the K30 that should have been a been more of a contender... but they realised they possible overdid the styling (although I personally don't mind it, some reviewers whined!) and decided to do a makeover model to appeal to more traditional minded togs.

I don't agree at all... putting high end features into cheaper bodies does not feel like I'm being taken for a ride at all - quite the reverse! At the moment Pentax are on fire in the 'bang per buck' stakes, especially if you take a K30/K50 model.

What really would be 'cynical' is if they crippled or limited their lower end models, as Canikon tend to do (smaller viewfinders, no weather sealing etc)...

I lol'd