Thanks Barrie, you are very fortunate with the birdlife you get! It's just that I took two pics of a wagtail recently, one with a 100mm macro which happened to be on the camera, and a 55-300mm at 300mm. Zooming in on the back of the camera so the bird looked the same size the 100mm version looked sharper, probably because I hadn't adjusted the exposure setting. I guess if the light is good and you can get a steady grip the 1.4x is worthwhile.

These are very good but how do they compare with closer cropping without the 1.4x teleconverter?

The K50 and no doubt others as well can be set to record both RAW and JPEG of the same shot (RAW+); that way you can process a shot or not, whatever you choose. I don't always get such sharp pictures as I would like but that's due to my shortcomings and not the camera as with careful preparation they can be pin-sharp.

Has anyone tried the pixel shift on the K-3II? This seems to be the facility that reviewers pick up on. and the Digital Camera review implies this is the only difference between it and the K-3. It also states the pixel shift generates huge RAW files of 100Mb+ but I thought that was the problem with another manufacturer's system, not the Pentax.

I can tell you that's better than a Voigtlander 35mm which froze up for the winter in Norway!

Hopefully this will be the first of a range of FF cameras. The point though you made Daronl about suitable lenses, that the cost of the body is just the start. With smaller body cameras now starting to get FF I wonder whether APS-C format in DSLRs will fade away and therefore the new FA lenses are a better long-term investment even if you don't buy into the body yet.

Good for you Horst!

The 'decisive moment' was apparent in a number of H C-B's photos, but I am sure that at least one was set up: a running girl caught in a ray of sunshine in a shadowed italian courtyard. Anyhow, it still works. The photo at the top of this thread would not be very memorable if it's just of some old bloke in his flat; however we know it is Matisse which raises our interest. Furthermore H C-B lays great emphasis on the doves, one of which Matisse is holding whilst sketching, and which is of greater significance if we recall Matisse's iconic image of the dove of peace and the date when taken of 1944. So we see a great artist in the act of creation with references which would have been recognised by all at the time.

It looks like I have started a bit of a debate on monochrome so here's my pennyworth. Before colour B/W film was all that was available so the photos were an 'honest' use of the technology available -it wasn't a deliberate negation of colour. Pure black and white hardly ever exist in nature; even where it might appear so the surfaces are coloured by reflected light. For this reason representational artists avoid the use of black, white and flat grey straight out the tube but prefer to mix black or grey from complementary colours. White for highlights is usually mixed with a tinge of colour for maximum contrast against a complementary background colour. Classical oil technique for dark areas is to build up several layers of coloured glazes to render subtleties in the shadows and greater depth. Colour is what gives an image life and a modern sensor is designed to record every subtlety of the spectrum, so to alter the image to monochrome is not an appropriate use of that medium. From that standpoint I can more readily find images on black/white film more acceptable, and occasionally a minimalistic image has qualities approaching a Chinese ink drawing. But for instance an autumn woodland scene in monochrome, I have to ask why? Devoid of colour, devoid of life.

If we look at the great photos taken in medium format then that gives an idea of how much detail (and thus cropping options) can be obtained from a larger sensor with more pixels. However I don't think we will resolve this issue until an enterprising member gets their hands on an FF and tries out their lenses.

Whilst walking along New Bond Street in London today I happened on a Cartier-Bresson exhibition in The Fine Art Society gallery, so I couldn't resist looking in. Whilst I usually advocate that the right place for photos is in a book, not on a wall, these were interesting mostly for their historic context. I particularly liked this one of Matisse in 1944 but as the original signed print was £17500 plus 5% tax I plumped for a large postcard. It is on until 29 October so if you are in the area it's worth a look.

Another thing struck me - I have a dislike of black-and-white photos and especially from a digital camera, but these worked for me because Henri wasn't overtly exploiting the monochrome effect but was just using the technology available at the time and somehow that comes through.

Ok so he didn't use Pentax as far as I know but I just thought this might be of interest.