This is all a bit speculative, but here's my pennyworth. Sony might have more technical progress but the sensors (and maybe much else) in Pentax are from Sony - why spend a fortune on development when you can buy someone else's? Take a look inside a B&O tv and the gubbins are (or were) Panasonic. Smart phones are taking the portable camera market so it will be the pocket cameras that suffer more than the serious market. I don't suppose cameras were ever really big profit lines, this coming from add-ons - i.e. the Kodak and Polaroid philosophy of making money from film sales with low-priced easy to use cameras as the incentive. Maybe there is a comparison with the hifi market from a few years ago, where are the middle market names like Sansui now? It has polarized into the likes of Sony at one end and small specialists at the other.

You can if it's got autofocus - just set the aperture ring to 'A'

This is getting off topic a bit, but I went into LCE before buying a camera to see what's what and get their advice. They offered Nikon and Canon, so I said 'what about Pentax?' They showed me the K50 and said they were good cameras as well - see the point? They were on display in the camera shops I have visited but compete for space with Olympus, Sony, Fuji, Samsung and don't often show the full range.

Whilst researching the internet for spotting scopes one reviewer noted that in astronomy telescopes the Pentax eye-pieces (these are the interchangeable bits like lenses for cameras) are the benchmark products against which others are compared. So, the product quality is there and that needs better marketing. Ricoh are clearly addressing the issue of attracting a younger market with the KS-1 and coloured options, my white K50 has attracted interest and attention (imagine if it was pink!)

I notice that SRB Photographic list lens adaptors for fitting Nikon, Canon and Sony lenses onto Pentax at £44.95 each - anyone tried these, and do they work all the auto focus and exposure functions?

I wouldn't mind a new body but this isn't it!

I bought the AA battery adapter plus 4 rechargeable AA batteries as a back-up for my K50 but for the cost I might as well have bought a spare standard battery, which is less bulky in the bag and holds power for longer, so I'm not totally sold on this feature.

My photos fall into two categories - records of family events and work-related documentation, and secondly everything else. The former get edited to remove images of poor technical quality, say about 20%, and of the latter I only keep what I can use for paintings and maybe worthy in their own right so probably 60-70% gets deleted. I don't have much interest in extensive post-processing so if the original isn't nearly there it goes.

This debate seems to revolve around whether touchscreen operation will make other inputs obsolete. Touch screens do some things very well, and many other things less well. What I don't get is the lack of choice that a touchscreen-based operating system implies. My work on a pc involves greater precision and more complex operations than can be achieved with a touchscreen operation. Thinking it might be useful my pc has a touchscreen but it is actually more of a nuisance than a benefit. Many operations involve a sequence of right and left button clicks and holds which I now do very rapidly - it has become semi-autonomous. I am on windows 7 now and sincerely hope future operating software will still let me work in the same way. A one-size-fits-all approach is pretty limiting.

Up to now my use of video has been for holidays, and for that I still think a camcorder is best. However having started this post very anti-video I am coming around to the opposite view, having realized that for some applications it is probably quite useful. I take the point made earlier about the availability of your range of lenses, especially large telephotos. An example I have just come across is a recording of a rare bird sighting; probably the DSLR was set up with an extreme telephoto and this was handy for a video - not exactly BBC grade but served its purpose.

These are really impressive, nice and sharp. Are they cropped?

Thanks richandfleur, to add it seems this applies to internally processed images in JPEG & video and not to RAW files.