Has Derreck Pye started a new business? The retouching quality is in line with his wedding photography!

Is there another extra charge to get your little girl back to normal?
Just gotta say, WOW. Truly nasty.

Not my point exactly. Just that I really think you would be putting yourself in a difficult position if you were to try to fund gear for two brands of cameras.
If for some reason Pentax did not make a kit that you can live with, my suggestion would be sell off what you have and stick with a single brand.

Anyway, not sure what you mean by the sounds of the focus rings with the 18-55. I think as the slapping noise when the lens reaches its limits is a bit outrageous. I haven't tried many other camera brands (and when I do, it is in a large warehouse store -- hardly a place to compare noise), but it does seem more noisy than lets say my Pentax 50mm or Sigma 18-200.

As much help as all of these comments have been....

Pete, do you really want two different brands of cameras? Two sets of lenses and two sets of flashes, etc...? I say, go out, test the competition. Maybe rent one for the weekend and give it a whirl.
Then if necessary sell the K10D and buy one or two of the one that best suits your needs and desires.

Suggestions are just that. Go out and test drive yourself and see what feels right for "you"!

The sawed edge form a block of wood.
The striations on the wood block are about 1mm or so apart, so the image is maybe 2-3mm across.
I taped the 18-55mm lens reversed on to a 50mm (the lenses fit together well and are easily taped in place).

Has anyone seen or used the Pentax sensor cleaning kit?

I'm comfortable with the old wet wipe system (although I need to get the new fluid safe for the K10D sensor), but the Pentax kit looks a bit unusual.

So far I have only one small spot that won't blow off, even with the Rocket Blower. I'm not going to clean for one spot, as I usually end up dropping another two in its place whenever I try to get that very last one.

But at some point I may need to do a more thorough cleaning. Just wondering if anyone has opinions on whether I should get the new Eclipse2 fluid or the Pentax sensor cleaning kit.

I am going through the process of investigating what I might need to do to upgrade my laptop. Since I intend on using the Remote Assistant with that laptop, that is very useful info!

Thanks

Anyone have any idea why the K10D is allowed to use a mix of wireless flash and the wireless remote with 0 second pause, but with the three second pause mode, the wireless flash mode is disabled?

The istD can work in either 0 second or 3 second IR remote mode.
The K10D will disable the wireless flash in 3 second IR remote mode.

You wrote that just to rub it in didn't you?
Sooo jealous! The stores here don't have them yet. (Hopefully not long after the estimated 15th!)

Do let us know how well it works for ya. Love to see real images and any info on speed, quiteness, water tightness. (OK, you probably wont want to fully test the latter)

Anyway, the SD card should work out of the box. If not, try formatting it, but that should not be necessary.

For the upgrade, you'll copy a file from your PC to the card, follow the instructions, then remove the file from the card. Nothing to it (just be sure your batteries are fully charged).

I have 4G RAM on a 2.6GHz dual processor machine and it is very slow with many operations. But I also believe it is doing more than most other products and gives superior results. Although I don't know if the results are worth the extent of speed difference. But I do believe they should be able to optimize some more speed out of the product.

Especially for close objects, are you sure it is back focusing, or is it possible that the focus sensor is simply off from where you think it should be?

If you assume the focus is on center, but is actually 5%-10% or further down the frame, this can cause a huge problem when you're not aware of it.

If you haven't verified exactly where your focusing sensors are, do that and see if that explains some of your issues.