I don't think it will be better then the Nikon D300 but coming very close so... €1000 (£900) is my guess but it depends on how good it is in the end though.

The glass photo plate that they used was 8 x 4½ ft (2.4 x 1.4 meter) the cost of the whole camera was $5000 in 1900 (todays money 130000 dollar) and the photo plate was $150 each (3900 dollar today).
Mighty expensive camera to take one photo, don't forget that you need 10 man to operate it



C.I.A. single-shot gun-camera (1966)
The Stinger is a single-shot re-loadable .22 magnum pen-gun, perhaps the single most popular weapon of the C.I.A. In 1966 the Stinger has been "swallowed" by an Asahi Pentax 35mm SLR and properly cocked via camera’s film advance lever. It shot by shutter release button breaking the lens elements in front of it.

oh I just came across this one, it looks really sweet but don't ask me for the price Gitzo Titanium

When on hikes I take a mono with me, much easier and lighter to carry. when needing a more stable platform the bag itself is mostly good enough.

There are some mini-tripods, usefull for macro shots on the ground and things like that but like I said, I use the bag for that.
If you want to take a tripod with you, then simply take a good one and try not to cut corners. I rather carry a bit more that's easier and better to use, then you have the idea it's worth carrying.

Velbon has this mini-tripod link which might be what you are loooking for.
Or else this one link with a good head makes a good tripod.

I myself have an eye on this one link
It has a need trick, you can turn the center colom from vertical to horizontal in a flash. Quite nice for doing macro and the likes.

I've my camera set to 0.7ev overexposure, what kind of metering mode to you use maybe that makes a difference. My is 90% of the time set to spot-metering.

For bracketing I often use 5 steps of 1ev stop, with raw those exposures overlap so you cover a range of more then 5ev stops then, that's good enough for me.

Yes indeed some P&S already have that.
With some of them you can click on the screen were you want to focus on and it simply does that, quite need.
To be honest I would like to have most under buttons, so screen use power and you need to take your eye from the viewfinder to look at it.

I rather have a modulair viewfinder with a translucant lcd screen or something like that, so that you can get information over the photo.
And that you can get different types of grids aswell.

I'm with Greytop here aswell.
You don't need to change your work flow as it is now with RAW, atleast if you've a program that support it.

I do the most things you do but then with RAW, crop, rotate, exposure, white balance and if needed, sharpening and noise reduction.
Nothing special that you shouldn't do I believe.
The greatest thing is that you can do most of these adjustments without any lost in image quality.

Of course if your JPG is good straight out of the camera then yes compared to that RAW is time comsuming but not if you do post processing with JPG.

Most RAW converters have a trial version so try them out I would say and see if it makes a difference. You can shoot JPG and RAW at the same time so you have nothing to lose.

Chris it's very easy, do you see the two red lines on the silver name-plate that means it's a mkII

Ah okay thank you John, didn't know how the software would handel the file.

Yep 12bit for the k10d and for the k20d
Maybe we might see 14bit for the k7 though it seem to become standard with high-midend cameras