[Clarity]

First of all, I'm Dutch so my English writing might not be that great, so my apologies if I make any gramar mistakes (please let me know if I do). Photography-wise I'm an amateur, I'm just starting with my new (and expensive) hobby for a a couple of months and I'm absolutely enjoying it. I'm still discovering what genre of photography I like the most. Before I got my DSLR I used to take pictures with my iphone. Being a Photoshop enthusiast I wanted a camera that could shoot RAW and since Pentax allows you to use old manual lenses that are usually less expensive, I choose Pentax. Also I like the look and feel of the Pentax camera's and the good DXO-mark scores that give you a lot of leverage in Photoshop.

Even before I bought my Pentax K5 I was reading the forums, especially the reviews. I'm really grateful for all of you kind folks who post those helpful and honest reviews of your lenses! So thank you for the effort. Especially those folks who take the time to write really detailed reviews and seem really knowledgeable on the subject of lenses and photography. I'd like to contribute and post reviews as well when I'm a little more experienced.

[savoche]

Welcome aboard! Good to see you have made good use of the forums already I agree, those reviews are really great!

Good to have you with us!

[RobA_Oz]

Welcome, and I doubt you have to worry too much about your English skills, from your first post. My wife and I have some good Dutch friends who use the times we meet up as part of their foreign-language practice regime! Sadly, most Dutch people I know speak better English than many native English-speakers, and you'll find a lot of native English-speakers have only a vague idea of how to coherently write more than two sentences at a time, let alone correctly use an apostrophe!

All that aside, I'm glad you have found Pentax Forums to be of use, already. Most people here are friendly and like to assist others, even if the conversations occasionally get a little robust on some topics, but that's just a sign of enthusiasm! Enjoy your time here.

[Kerrowdown]

Welcome aboard, as you've already discovered there's a wealth of good information here, so much so your own wealth could take a serious hit.

[Des]

Welcome to the forums.

Interesting to see why you chose Pentax. It is often said that Pentax cameras are designed by photographers, not marketing people. I also like the feel of the camera, the intelligence of the design and the great value for money. Had I appreciated the range of legacy lenses, and the helpful Pentax community, they would have been additional reasons.

[Clarity]

Thanks a lot for your kind responses and warm welcome! This really is a friendly forum.

Welcome, and I doubt you have to worry too much about your English skills, from your first post. My wife and I have some good Dutch friends who use the times we meet up as part of their foreign-language practice regime! Sadly, most Dutch people I know speak better English than many native English-speakers, and you'll find a lot of native English-speakers have only a vague idea of how to coherently write more than two sentences at a time, let alone correctly use an apostrophe!

All that aside, I'm glad you have found Pentax Forums to be of use, already. Most people here are friendly and like to assist others, even if the conversations occasionally get a little robust on some topics, but that's just a sign of enthusiasm! Enjoy your time here.

That's great, I find the best way to learn how to write or speak a foreign language is to actually write or speak it. It's also the most difficult, I remember when I had to write my first serious English emails I felt completely lost, unable to piece together just a simple sentence. Since Holland is a small country we have quite a lot of English TV with just subtitles; no dub in our own language like for instance Gemans have. Some of my textbooks at college used to have no Dutch translation so they too were English. It helps a lot in getting familiar with the language.

I haven't come across any really heated discussions on Pentaxforums yet, well actually the fullframe one turned out to be a fairly heated discussion. But to be honest that is to be expected, I guess while alot of us don't plan on buying a full-frame short-term but it would be nice to at least have it as an option for future upgrades. At least that's way I'm thinking about it.

@Kerrowdown. Nice one, loving the pun! Yes the reviews can sometimes lead to some 'gear acquiring syndrome' as Zack would call it.

[Kerrowdown]

'gear acquiring syndrome' as Zack would call it

Zack's not wrong.

The morale of this tale is don't tell Zack, it's a bit like how women when questioned about a new dress, the reply is always "that old thing I've had it for ages", well this works with camera kit too... so I'm told.

[Jean Poitiers]

Bonjour from France and welcome to PF, Clarity ... Hope to see some images soon. Salut, J

[Clarity]

Zack's not wrong.

The morale of this tale is don't tell Zack, it's a bit like how women when questioned about a new dress, the reply is always "that old thing I've had it for ages", well this works with camera kit too... so I'm told.

Striking similarity... And don't we put our lenses in front of a mirror to check out colours and details (unless you have a mirrorless camera)? Have you heard Zack's story about his history with gear? It's really interesting and a little tragic too. Glad he was able to get himself together and make great pictures again. If you haven't seen it, it's on kelbyone.com (you can sign up for a 24hr trail using a disposable email adress (spam)).

This might sound familiair to 'I might not need this lens now, but I might in the future when I'm going on a holiday trip' or something like that. There's an interesting TED talk about this phenomenon.

[c.a.m]

I will add my 'welcome' to you. Hope you will get a chance to post some of your pictures!

- Craig

PS. I have visited the Netherlands several times on business, mainly Amsterdam and The Hague.

[Kerrowdown]

Have you heard Zack's story

Oh... I thought Zack was a partner of yours, I've not heard the tale, I'll go check it out, if it's not too much of a stramash to get to see it.

[Clarity]

Oh... I thought Zack was a partner of yours, I've not heard the tale, I'll go check it out, if it's not too much of a stramash to get to see it.

I had to look "stramash" up in the dictionary, google-translate didn't give any results back. I guess that explains the meaning of the word pretty well. You do bring up a pretty good point though, as a newbie I should explore more pro togs and their work. The only ones I've remembered the name of are Ansel Adams, Fay Godwin and the Z-man. I'm pretty terrible at remembering names though so let's blame my bad name-remembering skills for this. Got any suggestions for me to look into?

@Craig, those are some pretty nice city's (although not everything nice there), I hope you enjoyed your stay there.

[TER-OR]

Welcome aboard!

I used to work for a Dutch-owned company and most of my Dutch colleagues spoke and wrote English better than Dutch by that point in their lives. Turns out I could read Dutch better than German, though all my second-language training was German (OK, and Latin).