We visited my Sister in Law over Christmas, she has a large garden overlooking fields, so I took my new K10 along.

My son captured these shots through a quite dirty double glazed patio window.
Apart from cropping and some sharpening in Silkypix they are pretty much as shot.
I must say that I am quite impressed with with the DA 50-200 especially since I picked it up new for £70.

I also think it is a testament to the K10's design that a 14 year old with no experience can pick up the camera and take good pics with such ease.










Happy New Year to all - Steve

Does anyone have a scrap 'A' Series lens that is available for spare parts?

In particular I am looking for the item below




The one on the left came out of my 50mm 1.4 and has you can just about make out the ring section has broken. The unbroken item is from a 28mm 2.8, the spring and ball head complete the assembly.

The complete assembly is actuated by the aperture ring and the ball head is is pushed into contact with the camera body when the lens is locked in the 'A' position.

thanks - Steve

I have been running various flavours of Vista for most of this year. It has a pretty interface especially on large screens. I find it very stable, but functionally it offers no new killer must have feature.

Hardware wise it needs lots of RAM and a good graphics card also with plenty of fast on board RAM.

Vista offers increased security, this can be annoying and it does consume resources and processor time. Fortunately it is configerable.

You may find issues with older peripherals, but most of mine went away when I installed a dedicated USB card as opposed to using the motherboard ports.

As for versions I use the Business edition most for my work and it serves most of my needs.

We have PC running the Ultimate edition, but it is probably overkill, the Media stuff is cool, if and I say if you can make use of it. We played around with it for a while, but have probably not used it in the last 6 months.

First let me say that my first DSLR is still at the North Pole awaiting delivery by Reindeer Express, so I will not not in the market for a K20D for some time, that said it is fun speculating on what might / might not be included.

Ben hints of features that will improve his workflow as a professional .

Speculating what about!

Wireless connectivity - direct 2 way comms, control of camera / PC with live view, automated download to PC or other external devices ?

More user definable custom functions "camera macros"?

Expanded sensor range say 50 - 3200 with less noise for those who need to make v large prints?

Possibly a larger sensor format with a 1.25/1.30 crop , alleviating some of the depth of field issues with v wide angle lenses? I am ssuming that the latest DA lenses are OK with this.

Improved AF a percieved weakpoint by non Pentaxians, improved manual focussing , choice of easily changeable screens?

On board focus calibration?

Personally I would like to see restoration of the KAF2 mount in the body and the extra functionality that it would bring to K mount lenses.

I would also make use of extra processsing power available ,to allow user defineable custom lens profiles. Coupled with an uncrippled KAF2, there should be no reason why a profile cannot be created that would allow a 'prime' K mount lens to have the functionality of a KA mount. Besides the ability to dial in aperture settings, EV compensation could also be a feature of the profile.
Expanding this thought further, Pentax themselves could make K and M series profiles available for download direct into the camera. When such a lens is attached the camera would recognise it as K mount and offer a choice of 'manual' (green button mode) or a list of selectable custom lens profiles.

I have been caught out too many times with faulty electrical items at Christmas, so I needed to make sure everything was working as it should. Thats my story and I am sticking to it

More practically I wanted to charge up the battery (I hope it holds the charge) The family all meet at my parents very early Christmas morning (6:00am) for breakfast and present opening. I say breakfast, but it is more like a 'high tea', with all the trimmings. Lots of photo ops and I wanted to have the K10D ready to go.

The focus could be a little off. I recall the green hexagon confirmed focus, but I was only around 3 feet away so not much depth of field. More likely a combination of slowish shutter speed and my son's movement and inexperience with the camera, ISO was up at 800 I believe.

My son was aware of the camera but not that I was actually 'shooting'. If I had taken the time to set things up the moment would have been lost.

I only had my hands on the camera for around 30 minutes before my wife took it away to be wrapped for Christmas.

K10 A28 F2.8 1/4second no flash

My christmas present arrived early last Friday a K10GP. My wife agreed to let me check it out before wisking it away. In the meantime I snapped away in the house and managed to capture this shot of my son.

Not good enough for a competition entry and too much PP but I like it because of the story behind it.
My son is sports mad but suffered an injury to his knee and is waiting for an operation. In the meantime he is getting into lots of things and decided to learn how to play guitar. The twist being that he is right handed and the guitar is not

For me its got to be one of your best.

Well done

Good to see the lenses getting a positive review.

From a business perspective it makes sense for Pentax to form alliances and it really does not matter whether it is Tokina, Schneider or Tamron for that matter. Reduced development costs and time to market are very important.
I would be concerned for the long term if Pentax outsourced all design work and lost this core competence.

The point about coatings is interesting and if true goes against the generally held belief that Pentax have superior coating technology.

I am not sure if Pentax reserves its latest/greatest coatings for the * or Ltd lenses. Anyone know?

I think we are getting off topic here.

I do not blame the US for the Pentax, or any other companies pricing model. Like most companies Pentax views Europe as a number of small markets rather than a single block. The EU was supposed to change that, but that is another issue.

You are right European high street prices will always be higher due to higher levels of taxation, that is the price we pay for some of our 'Social programmes' . To compensate for this average earnings certainly in W Europe are higher than the US.

I like and admire many things about the US, if I am truly envious of anything, it is the open spaces away from the big cities.

Getting back to the original question I posed at the start of this thread, regarding rebates. The question I should have asked was:
Can we expect a short term drop in the price of the K10 in Europe, following the reintroduction of rebates in the US and the likely announcement of a new model in early 2008?

I think the concensus is No