I think from my experience so far I appreciate what jkharmer is saying. I've not felt the need to calibrate my monitor, though I guess if I become more exacting I might need to. For me now I tried a few places and found snapfish to be very very close to what I see on the screen by default. That might be enough for you. Another thing I also found so far is when doing black and whites snapfish had the edge over dscolour labs. The snapfish B&W's were pure B&W, and the DSColour labs ones had a slight cast to them.

I don't find photobox to be very good at all in comparison to others. I would do an order with snapfish and dscolourlabs for some of the same photographs and see the difference. Photobox printed too dark and so lost lots of detail, say in someones hair for example, whereas with snapfish lots of the different subtle highlights in hair that I would see on screen all came out.

on the k10d i'd find in that scenario that i could get away with 800 iso using my 50mm lens and I'd imagine you could do the same on your camera without a flash. Only thing would be when the baby is splashed, you'll not freeze the action which would need a flash.

Echoing the rest on here. You will get the hang of what works and what doesn't. Colours could probably be better with different white balance, like Daylight or Cloudy. I've been finding at this time of year, my first with DSLR that the auto white balance can produce quite washed out colours, and you need either daylight or cloudy white balance. The last picture to my eyes looks like it was taken at 1600 ISO as the image seems noisy. Personally I don't go above 800 on the K10D I have. The focussing side I think comes down to experience. With the shake reduction on 1/45 might be your limit, but some can do better, depends how much coffee you drink! Also don't forget the red light tells you what you will focus on but you're not in focus until the green hexagon appears.

welcome to you. Let's see a list of your lenses too in your signature, only for me to go green with envy

I get down to Woking (Brookwood to be precise) where my Mum is, but normally Yorkshire is the place to be!

i thought so, its one of my flickr favourites.

thanks for the tip on the giottos rocket blower, wow its a monster, came in a huge box from amazon this morning. has done the trick for me. the spot i had was visible if you took a shot of the sky on the kit lens so easy to test afterwards if it worked. spot on! (or off)

i think its possible with patience, I found this one on flickr, 5 minutes exposure. I really like it, probably a rock solid tripod used too. As far as i can tell this was taken in a K10d not modified.

IR pic of Falkirk wheel

its really worth looking out for a 50mm prime second hand. I have the 1.4 jobby i got last year full price and love it but my sis-in-law just picked up an old manual 50mm f2 for less than £13 off ebay, that was after keeping a sharp eye out as they had been going for much more. And I have tried it and am impressed. small and light too so no pressure on the camera bag. I'll also put a word in for the kit lens for value for money, mines the older one on the k10d, and i do like it, these are pretty cheap to pick up, and i think on ebay are pretty common too. this is all assuming budget is tight, if not, see above!!

i like it. good wide range, and price seems ok, will it go up or down in the current climate 4 months until my birthday