Sorry to hear that Don, I feel that a camera designed ergonomically and functionally as a stills body is a compromise for video use and vice versa. Surely for pro use a dedicated video body would be the best option? That would leave another system for stills.

A multinational NATO exercise and I see we British have sent one plane! Glad we could spare it.

Seriously? Shutter speed, aperture and ISO irrelevant then? What I don’t get with a mirrorless viewfinder is that unless the exposure is approximately right you won’t see anything, so a problem for manual, and in dark conditions you will get a lot of noise. And for focusing I wish they would bring back the split ring and other focus assists used before autofocus, much better than focus peaking with which I achieve better results by switching off. I know I keep mentioning the Hasselblad MF as it was very seductive (and £2000 off at TPS!) but the much vaunted bright viewfinder is no better than the prism view on any Pentax DSLR. Maybe one day they will be as good as optical viewfinders but definitely a long way to go yet.

Mirrorless isn’t the holy grail so many claim; it is an overcrowded market and Canon have said they are expanding in that field in the face of competition from Sony. I have tried several bodies and found none I would swap from DSLR for, even the Hasselblad viewfinder image is juddery when you pan, and the likes of Olympus are like squinting through a tiny keyhole in comparison. The only benefit of lighter weight diminishes as the sensor gets larger and the lenses grow accordingly, and then you have all those extra batteries to carry. Leica are still successfully producing rangefinder bodies when everyone else dropped these years ago but no-one is condemning them for it.

It would be good to see Pentax developing its medium format bodies as it already has a good range of MF lenses. The Hasselblad and Fujifilm MF mirrorless are serious challengers but have a tiny range of lenses so a radical body from Pentax would take the ground if not left too late.

Nice one Gareth, hope making this was cathartic. I liked your images and couldn’t help noticing the fascinating texture of the shoreline with smoothed stone and water in the crevices. Lots of potential for wide angle and maybe abstract compositions.

Here are a few I took during the week between the rain. I used the tracking focus for the first time on most, and am pretty pleased with the results but comments welcome.

yesterday caught a brief glimpse of sun, lying in dunes on the Cornish coast watching the skylarks.

I am wondering about painting the walls and ceiling but don’t know what to recommend. White would reflect and diffuse the light which would be useful for bounce flash but black would be more dramatic with greater control of direct light.

No I wouldn’t! This was a ‘see if I like it and learn how it works’ purchase but there was some bug in the machine which bit deep and led me to the K1 and more lenses. But apart from the offspring of superstars how many get a Leica as a first camera?

With little idea of DSLRs I went to LCE with a Nikon in mind as I had fancied one when I was young and poor. Entry level models were a disappointment and felt cheap, for very little more I got a K50 plus kit lens for £399 which offered much more quality and a prism instead of mirrors. If the cheapest Pentax had been around £679 I would not be here now.