The more drives the more heat generated so you need to ensure that there is more efficient cooling in your system. Most PCs come with reasonably basic cooling - servers on the other hand are designed for RAID5 and have fully steapable cooling. As we know, the more heat generated in a PC, the more likely it is to fail!

One rule of thumb I have is to replace my hard drive about every three years, even if I don't need the extra space. I will also employ the same rule with any external drive I have. I also scruibe tto the thought that only one external drive is needed, more USB/Firewire devices that are powered through USB etc put a greater strain on the PCs power unit (PSU) and raise the heat generated by the system.

I would also advise investing in a good surge protection power brick (set of sockets) and voltage spikes can cause disk failure and data loss.

I was wondering what backup software people used and what the inpact on PC performance was?

Good backup software is key I think. I use and extranal Harddrive and double layer DVDs. I also partition my main drive to ensure that I can reformat the Cdrive if required without loosing other data.

I have heard that Tamron's mounts can come loose. It might be worth checking the screws on the mount on the lense itself. If it is not a tight fit on the camera it could cause some extra wear on the camera's mount.

Regards
David

The digicam sensor is very small, and then there is the issue of the 'almost' integrated lens! My last 110 film was returned without the case as requested

I will have some more time soon to continue with this. However, I don't expect to find a solution with the digicam or even get close. However, it will give me ideas as to how the mechanism would work. I think it would have to be based on a switch operated by the mirror flipping up which, in the case of the 110 is also the shutter! Power on on the unit would be the wind on, not figured how an integral power off would work out as you would then need to take a 'blank shot' and wind on again. Also, the film plane position would probably differ from the 110 film meaning images would be out of focus - this one is the most tricky bit.

An AAA battery won't fit into a 110 cartridge so a smaller 1.5v lithium battery would be needed. I asume that there is a power button too?

I am quite interested in taking a look, are there screws on the unit or does it appear sealed?

An interesting project, however, it might be hard to make work as there would need to be some way to activate the device using the 110's winder mechanisum and then there is its battery - what size battery does it take? If it is internal and only chargeable by the USB cable, there might be some issue. Then it needs to fit into a 110 film case to be an ideal solution - i.e. can remove it for download into a PC and to replace or recharge the battery and also provide the correct lens to film plane focus distance.

Does it have a status display LCD?

I too have a 110 and it is a great little system.

Thoughts on turning this into a digital camera are not so far-fetched. About 12 years ago I discovered a website advertising for beta testers for a new product that they had in development. It was digital film cartridge designed to fit inside a 35 mm SLR, primarily they appeared to be developling for Canon and Nikon and the price was projected to be about £800. Naturally I regestered for the beta programme but did not hear anything and can find no evidence that the product went into production. Sadly I deleted the link when it stopped working and can't remember the company, having lost my emails from that 'era'.

However, this proves that the idea of a digital 110 film cartridge is fully feasable if not commertially viable. However, if someone knows someone who knows someone....

I got a lot of information from photographic magazines such as AP and Digital Camera and some of the associated sites also have information on filters.

There is only one filter that cannot be replicated on the computer and that is the polariser (you need a circular polar). I also have a graduated ND filter as using High Dynamic range photography, though great, takes time.

As long as you shoot in RAW, you only need a polariser (I use Cokin P-Series) and a dedicated filter (I use a UV filter) on each separate lense.

David

I have the KA50 f1.4, bought it as a student and never regretted it. I was also happy to find it performed excellently on the K10D and also allowed me to controll a slave flash by setting the camera on manual and selecting the apature from the ring to controll flash light. A bit hit and miss on the focusing, however, the K10D when in auto focus mode with this lens will show the focus 'locked on' viewfinder indicator so I have a way round this when I need it.

My other main lens is the Sigma 18 to 200 which produces excelent results and is compact enought to carry easily. It has the added advantage of helping keep sensor dust to a minimum!

I have looked at the Sigma 10 to 20 and was very impressed and very good lens, worth a look. The other lense I have looked at is the Sigma 134 to 400 lens.

I use the rocket blower and I have a good way of checking the sensor. I take a shot of my ceiling (white) with flash, ensuring I am at about 100mm on my 18-200 and out of focus (i.e manual focus) you won't get a locak anyway.

For me, this seems to show up the dust and dirty spots very well. I flip the mirror up, give a few good blows and then check again - repeat till no spots!