Howard they are lovely colours, but as pointed out not as sharp as you could achieve.

With a 300mm lens, if you are handholdingyou really should be using 1/500 without S/R, or 1/250-1/125 (as a minimum) with S/R to avoid camera shake. A monopod or tripod would help here.

You were using 200 ISO which is fine with a tripod, but handheld you should up that to 400 or 800 to give you a faster shutter speed.

You were using f16. This is not really neccesary for this kind of shot, if you used f8 you would have gained 2 stops of speed or 5.6 and gained 3.

With wildlife your camera can be as still as possible but the bird shakes its head at the moment you capture that perfect shot and your result is so-so. You really need to try and aim for the fastest shutter possible. This is one of the rare occasions I use Tv on the camera.

Whilst I wholeheatedly agree that everyone should read the manual, the point of this thread is that the OP did read the manual, but was confused by it. I have been there myself in the past too.

A lovely shot and a great example of what a little bit of pp can do.

Congratulations, I remember when you first posted the picture here.

Now thats what I call a lens case !

I took a trip to Wakehurst Place in West Sussex last week and came accross this chap in the woods. Not a great photo, but I thought he was fun image to share.

I had a peek at your flickr site paulyrichard. Some very nice photos there.

Yes it is. Here is a great site for all things Pentax

http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/bodies/A/program.html

Oh no, you know what this means.......over at D*Review they wont be even considering a new camera without microsecond flash and laser trigger as standard

Excellent picture.... you have a great eye for composition.