My last three printers have been Epson Stylus Photo A4 models and the results are spectacularly good -- certainly as good as a lab. I've no reason to doubt the latest one in the series, the P50, is just as good. It's about £100. I use Epson ink (hugely expensive) and paper, but I have used compatible inks from Premier Ink in the past and I couldn't tell the difference. Maybe go back to these.

On the longevity front, a few of my prints have been on a wall for about six years and there's no sign of fading. This may not be the case with compatible inks.

I'd love an A3 printer but the running costs are high (unless you go CISS) and it's cheaper to farm out the printing.

Good luck in your search.

Al

Another vote for the Centon MR-20. Like Dpm, I don't use mine very often but it does the job, even for portraits with a lens of around 35mm (it's far from a powerhouse and you have stay fairly close). The trigger voltage is fine for modern cameras. They crop up on eBay for next to nothing.

Al

I've never used profiling and my prints from a series of computers (albeit the same box, but with motherboards etc upgraded) and cheap Epson A4 inkjets have always produced excellent results.

In your position, I'd start from square one and undo the profiling (if that's possible) and try a straight print. If that's still no good, I'd look at the printer. Some are more accurate than others. The Epson Stylus Photo series manage to produce good prints "out of the box". I appreciate that monitor calibration and profiling should give better results, but this isn't always the case.

Al

[quote:3496ace15f="DOIK"]It can indeed -- but you have to know where it's needed .

The same goes for the hyphen. The standard Scottish pub sign authorised by the government to warn under-age drinkers to stay away is missing one. The pub I frequent is, I suspect, the only one in the country that's punctuated properly (thanks, in this case, to Serif PhotoPlus rather than Photoshop).

Al

Thanks for ruining my night, Col5555ine. I'm just back from the pub and really don't need a K-01. But it's so tempting ...

Al

I'm a great fan of Serif PhotoPlus (as I may have mentioned before) and use it in preference to the Adobe products, which I have used and also find excellent. In your case, Aura, you could do a lot worse than download the free version of PhotoPlus from here link and give it a try. In reality, most photographers need nothing more than this will give you. The paid-for versions of PhotoPlus are ridiculously inexpensive for what they offer and I find them more than competent to handle the occasional professional stuff I do. Others may be able to justify more sophisticated (and expensive) software, but this could be a good starting point for you.

Al

Depending on your tablet, it may be simpler to connect a standard SD card reader. I use a neat little Fujifilm USB reader plugged into a short "host" cable (available on eBay for a couple of quid) and stick this into the micro USB port on my Archos 80 G9 Turbo tablet. Works fine. I don't much like the idea of using a micro SD adapter in the camera.

Al

As an experiment, I just took some shots of a tapestry in my dark living room (or drawing room, as I prefer to call it) with a K30 and a GX-20. The only light in the room was from a small table lamp in the corner. It was too dark for the eye to make out any detail in the tapestry. The result: both cameras produced top-notch images with flash and there was no real-world difference in their focusing speed or accuracy. Could there be an element of emperor's new clothes in the this low-light focusing business? Damned if I know.

Al

I've got the Cokin P306, with the Cokin logo, but an eBay search for "Cokin P filter wallet" brings up a bunch of cheaper ones that look identical, apart from the absence of a Cokin logo. Mine has a shoulder strap, unlike the £28 "genuine" Cokin one you'll find under this search. A couple of the unbranded ones, at under £8, have a strap. The quality of materials may be different but, from the photo, they could all have come out of the same factory. They can be a little tight if you put in the filter holder (but where else would you keep it?)

Al

No problems with my AF-360. Can you borrow another flash to try to narrow down the problem to the camera or flash. My money would be on the flash. It's certainly worth checking for a firmware update for the flash. No other ideas, I'm afraid.

Good luck.

Al