I love my Pentax gear and daren’t add up what it all cost, I am also a staunch supporter of the brand. However I am becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of any activity from Ricoh regarding new products. In January we had the new 11-18mm and since then two lenses have had upgrades, no sign of the 70-200 f4 nor the new DFA 85mm, nor any new bodies. I don’t think any other camera manufacturer has put out so little, the 100 year anniversary is in November and we had high hopes of a major announcement but it has gone horribly quiet.

Today I looked at a Nikon Z7 and realised how much better the K1 is for usability and the sensor so near to the mount looks very vulnerable, but there were positives as well. I don’t need to change as long as my K1 keeps performing but the question I have started asking myself is how long will all my expensive equipment have any sort of trade-in value? The lenses are useless on any other system. I would be happy to stay with Pentax if they show progress with new developments but there is no sign at the moment and I fear a crisis point is fast approaching. Even after revolutionising the MF market they have done nothing since and allowed other brands to steal their lead. I have reached the point where buying any new Pentax gear is on hold.

So please Pentax give me a shot in the arm, show me you are committed to making the best DSLR kit on the market as it would be with a very heavy heart that I would push it all over the counter for something else.

I know what you mean, the site is fascinating and being a dark sky location is great for stars as well, but in daylight the stones are rather underwhelming. Great idea to liven them up with this!

What happened to the f4 70-200mm expected earlier this year?

Thanks Cabstar, it was non-negotiable and being being my first paid assignment I went along with it for the experience. It came about from my work photographing a Countryfile episode being filmed (see another thread) and other voluntary shoots. It was fun in a way and the cash is a bonus but I wouldn’t like to do it on a regular basis like a full time pro, what with the expectation to get it right and processing loads of photos afterwards.

Thanks Chris, just writing the post clarified things and I came to the same conclusion. Still it was an interesting experience and I just hope they like the results.

I have just finished my first paid commission on a private location, one of the conditions being the client would own copyright of photos on full payment. Not something I was overly happy about but went along nevertheless, and they have agreed I can use the photos for my own use. My question to the more experienced of you is:

I just sent a selection of jpegs, about 25%, covering what they required and obviously those that came out the best from my RAW files. It also occurred that I could take more for my own use but as it turned out there wasn't time. So, would the client's copyright only apply to those I sent or could they legitimately claim ownership of all those taken at their location on that day?

That looks superb Geoff, did you process in Lightroom? I ask because it looks to me as if it could benefit from the slider in white balance going more to green and away from purple a bit. I envy your energy!

Carefully disguised as a scarecrow!

I tried all the options including the iMac converter and nothing converts the files to DNG; there are various free processing options which open the files as TIFF but they all look very dull and no matter what I did they weren’t as good as the JPEGs, and to be fair those are already good enough so I stopped saving RAW files. Photoshop is the only one where the RAW files look decent but I wouldn’t get it just for that. Just something else that Pentaxians take for granted but haunts other camera users!

The Adobe Photoshop package. I just bought a Leica D-lux 7 which comes with a three month subscription and that’s the only software that effectively opens the Leica RAW files! What a con. Never been really interested in PS as all my processing is with Lightroom 6, the last non-subscription version. However the PS package blocked it’s use when it expired so with an urgent deadline and no time to sort this I paid the sub. If I cancel I can always reinstall LR6 as I have it on dvd.

The Leica has a small 16mb sensor and zooming in on the computer you really appreciate the K1’s cracking performance. The images are good but the detail isn’t there if you want to crop, but it’s ok as a pocket camera. I know, I know I should have got the GR III but that has a fixed focal length and the Leica is so damned pretty! Seduced as always by the glamorous blonde rather than the sensible one.