Firstly, welcome!

You may a steep learning curve, but I believe that the K10D would be your best option and represent great value for money. It will provide you with room to grow too and a great range of very high quality lenses comming out. You also may be able to find a great second hand deal on K10Ds as some will be upgrading to the K20D.

So am I! And my early belief that I was 'stupid' was as a direct result of my father! I am sure you will have a great influence to the contrary - as did my mother!

May I suggest using the iSpell add-in if you are a MS Explorer user. Very useful!

Jacobs Digital do their own range of rubber hoods, scroll to the bottom of the page. These screw onto the filter thread and, being rubber, can be popped back if not wanted.

Lets not forget that MACs (and possibly PC's) can be made to dual boot to either Windows (XP or Vista) or MAC OX!

Really you can have the best of both worlds. However, as a long tern PC user, if you want the best of both worlds, I would go for the MAC and consider a dual boot option.

It should also be noted that both OSs are about as stable as each other and both OSs about as secure as each other. The difference is that most mallicious software is designed for Windows and not MAC OS.

On the performance side, in general PCs require more omph as the OS requires more resources so things should run about the same on both systems.

One thing to consider is how upgradeable is the MAC? Can you upgrade the harddrive? Would a 500GB external drive work for what you want? You should also note that the built in back up in MAC's latest OS is far superier to that offered by Windows Vista. You will always pay more for an Apple but would buying a PC be false economy?

Just some points for you to consider.

One thing is to avoid Linux at this time as the software for photogrphers is not a mature as it is for MAC and PC, give it a few years.

What about using a cemetry? There are many great victorian cemetries in and around london. A particular favourite is Camberwell Old Cemetry in Forest Hill and New Southgate Cemetry in North London. Also Highgate Cemetry.

You would probably need permission but it should be free and there is lots of potential.

Just a suggestion

I looked as well as the Photography Monthly surprised me too. I too can find no evidence other than the statement in this month's edition of Photography Monthly. I guess they need to be right if they are going to print it

All I could find was that Hoya supply their glass!

Acording to Photography Monthly, Tokina was born out of Nikon in the 1970s so that a group of disenchantes optical engineers could make zoom lenses. They were bought by Hoyer in the early 1990 and operate largely independently.

Tokina produce the 80 to 400 f4.5 to f5.6. it is interisting to note that Tokina is owned by Hoya! This lens is produced in a Nikon and Canon option! I wonder if we will see a Pentax version.

When I bought my 50mm 1.4 I had the option to buy the 1.2, however two things swayed me to the 1.4 over the 1.2 and that was the sales assistant who said he though the 1.4 was a better lens as the 1.2 was a little too soft and that the 1.2 was twice the price of the 1.4! The 1.2 was selling new for £200! This was in 1988 (I think) and was for the A series lens.

Enjoy the flash, it is great and I like the bounce flash effect.

p-TTL is very straightforward, all settings work from the camera, It only becomes complex when using flash to trigger a slave and then the pre-flash triggers the slave and it does not show in the picture.

I have been playing with the strobe setting!