Personally, considering how badly the reviews seem to be skewed toward Nikon I have no idea why Pentax advertises on DPR. Think Im on crack or a fan boy? Compare these two descriptions: Review of Nikon 18-200VR It's no great surprise to see Nikon's VR system performing well here. Whilst it doesn't quite seem to deliver the 4 stops which Nikon claim in our hands, it comes pretty close, especially at 200mm. The key difference here is not so much the yield of critically sharp shots at slow shutter speeds, as the hugely increased chances of getting usable shots with only mild blur, which would be completely impossible in the absence of stabilisation. Review of K200D VR With anti-shake switched on the improvement is immediately visible although you still only get 100% sharp shots at 1/100th sec. On the plus side even at shutter speeds as slow as 1/6th sec you get 50% usable shots. The system gives you an advantage of approximately 2 stops but tends to work more efficiently at very slow shutter speeds. This is a reasonable result but not outstanding. It is also not even close to the the 4 stops that Pentax claims its anti-shake is capable of. Now go look at the actual results from the test. According to their tests, at 50mm and 1/6th of a sec, the Nikon had a 10% chance of a "Sharp" picture. The K200 had a 30% chance. Across the board the K200 did better but in the "Conclusions" section the reviewer states "Efficient image stabilization (not as good as Pentax claims though)" while the Nikon gets "Very effective vibration reduction system, at least 3 stops benefit." That is just one example, there are plenty more. Ok, one more. In the D5000 review the lack of autofocus motor is glossed over and in-body stabilization never mentioned. In conclusions there is this - "No built-in AF motor restricts lens choice (though most popular lenses do work)." Unless of course you want an AF/VR 50mm, or 35mm, or just about ANY f/2.8 or faster lens. In fact, you can count the TOTAL number of Nikon AF-S/VR lenses on your fingers and toes and have 4 little piggies to spare. Oh wait, one of those comes with the camera so you are down to just 15 choices after that. Pentax has 28 in production and of course the older lenses work just fine. For me the subjective portions of DPR reviews are worthless. I read them for feature comparison and for warning signs in image samples. Numer 1: Here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonyalphadslra550/page11.asp And compare it to this: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk7/page14.asp With the image stabilization turned off, the K7 performs MUCH better than the A550... why? Is it on purpose? I mean... it all sounds like it was on purpose to highlight the improvement of the image stabilization system. Therefore, despite the actual number of photos that is usable at 1/15 and 1/8 for the Pentax is higher, the final claim is that Pentax can't even make 2 stops, while Sony can make up to 3. Yeah... sure. Numer 2: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonyalphadslra550/page13.asp I can really see noise reduction on RAW images from any of those cameras. It is really easy to see the blotches which NR make. And that can even easily be seen when you compare this: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk7/page16.asp Is it really credible that the D5000 has less noise than the D300s, or is it just that the user of a D300s is more keen to see NR, so it's not by default in RAW? Is really Nikon that stupid to put a noisier sensor in the APS-C flagship camera??? Don't think so. Therefore... it should be highlighted as something wrong to do. Number 3: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonyalphadslra550/page18.asp Is it just me, or the Pentax K7 has: better body (magnesium, with steel chasis, and weathersealing)? It also has better autofocus on paper (9 cross points, while the green one has only one), the metering system highlighted is not better (though true that it can separate colors), the shutter speed goes up to 1/8000, the WB is better because of really fine tuning and more memories... and it could have been added a couple things that are not mentioned. Numer 4: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonyalphadslra550/page20.asp It's all about how you say things. With only 100 dollars difference, price and "more expensive" is mentioned, while it was not mentioned in the K7 review despite being more than 500 dollars cheaper than the competition (with the exception of the old 50D), nor even in the Canon 7D review. Yes... everything depends on how you say things. Overall... I think the final word is accurate, but I still see some parts where bias is kind of obvious. -- hide signature -- Alan Schamber