Do you complain that your DSLR has 10 extra AF points you never use? Do you complain that your camera has matrix and centre weighted metering? Therein lies the difference between you (and most photographers) and Ken Rockwell.

On a separate note, do we know why Pentax has opted for a DX version of an MF sensor? I'd have figured that if you were going MF you'd go MF all the way.

Ken has some really strong opinions, but a lot of them are just hilarious. Why do you have 11 AF points when all you need is 1? Why do you need 77 segment metering when all you need is one? Someone needs to call for a whaaaambulance.

What's piqued my interest in the announcement is the Savos IX+ AF module. Has Pentax designed a new AF module? Will that be making its way down to the DSLRs?

It's a manual lens isn't it? At f/1.2 you're going to have to be really fast and accurate at focusing or you're going to miss a lot of shots.

My day job is as a software engineer, so I'll use an analogy from software engineering.

Photographers complain that digital cameras have lowered the bar and allowed everyone to be a "photographer". This is like a software engineer complaining that cheap digital computers and the availability of free software like Linux coupled with excellent development tools that are available for free has cheapened their products. Practically anybody today can pick up a computer programming book and start cranking out commercial grade software. After all you are using the same equipment that the professionals use, so what's the problem?

The problem is that you need to be disciplined enough to commit to learning the craft. This applies to software engineering, it applies just as well to photography. You can't just pick up the camera and expect to be producing excellent photos over night. Hours and hours of time has to be invested before you become proficient. Some say that there is a 10,000 hour rule - you need to invest 10,000 hours into learning something before becoming an expert at it. This definitely applies to photography.

Take a look at any software company. What percentage are engineers? If you took a quick survey of the major software companies, you'd find that roughly 20% of the workforce comprises of software engineers. That's because there's a lot more to successful business than just focusing on your core product. How much time do you think a professional photographer spends taking photographs versus the time they spend doing other things (i.e. the boring stuff) like meeting clients, marketing themselves, producing prints/albums, various admin work?

What separates the professional from the amateur is the amount of work they put into the boring stuff. An amateur will not be able to offer the kind of service and support that a full time professional can. In weddings, the amateur delivers the images on a CD or on standard prints. The professional meets up with the clients after the event, and goes through the process of arranging the album with them. The amateur struggles to build working relationships with clients as they have a separate full time job to attend to.

So no, I do not think that the professional photographer has anything to worry about. They have to adapt, but then that's just like any other industry.

That's both the advantage and the curse of DXO. If your camera body + lens combo is supported, it produces the most gorgeous results especially if you couple it with the optional Film Pack. The downside is that they're rather slow to support camera/lens combinations. I'm still waiting for them to add the combination of the DA* 16-50 and 50-135 with a K7 body

Go for the Metz 48 AF-1. It's a decent flash, well spec'ed and cheaper than Pentax's equivalents.

The lack of a built-in motor is not that big a deal unless you're considering buying old lenses.

Turn off NR, Distortion and CA correction. That should allow you to shoot at the rated 5 fps until the camera buffer is full.

This problem used to affect both JPEG and RAW. You can see the JPEGs in the link I provided and the RAWs are at the bottom of the previous page in that review. The green tint is noticeable when going from any ISO setting to ISO 6400.

It's a pity that I do not have any ISO 6400 shots on hand as I've deleted all of them as they just looked wrong.

This firmware update has improved ISO 6400 somewhat. I'm not bothered too much by the grain (at those speeds you're rarely going to print larger than 8x6 anyway) but I was always concerned by the shift in colour when going from ISO 3200 to ISO 6400. See this page of DPReview's review and compare the ISO 3200 and ISO 6400 samples, you should see that the ISO 6400 shot has a greenish tint.

This is no longer present on the 1.03 firmware