Pentax Dslr users have to be a very patient bunch of people, as the company has had so many ups and downs over the years. New Pentax Dslr models tend to be released only about every two years. The K-5 was heralded as “one of the best APS-C DSLRs currently on the market” but it wasn’t a big enough leap ahead from the K-7 to persuade me to spend my hard saved cash and upgrade. The latest Pentax offering is the K-30, a modestly priced effort but with some useful improvements, especially to image quality/processing and video and much expanded autofocus modes. Poor autofocus performance in some situations has been…

We went to a garden party today…well there was a garden and there was a party, but due to typical Saddleworth summer weather, the two never quite meshed, so we sat comfortably in the converted barn of our friend’s house, overlooking Alphin Hill enjoying food, wine and good company. Just before we left, another party guest suggested we look up an article on the web by Professor Roderick Arthur Smith, who was educated at Hulme Grammar School in Oldham before continuing his education at St John’s College Oxford followed by Queens College Cambridge. Professor Smith had walked the Saddleworth hills as a boy with his father and would have seen…