Hi Neil,

I would agree with what Mr B has posted.
All in all they are a pretty good set for someone fairly new to photography.
Just work on your composition and you'll be fine.

I have to agree with Oso.
Being a confirmed and fully paid up member of the Dinosaur club I still hanker after the tactile feel of the spotmatics, the LX , the Nikon Fm.
Just holding a spotty and operating the wind on lever always gives me a huge feel good factor.

Superb images Mat.
You make me quite envious.

Superb detail. I would also be interested in hearing how well the lens works with the teleconverter.

Lovely colours and how nice to see so many Sparrows.
They're pretty scarce up here on Skye!

I think they both have their merits and indded they are both shots I would be proud to have taken.
No 1 because as you said you can still see the pebbles and No 2 because
of the movement portrayed in the water.
Both fine shots.

It's all been said already.
But just to let you know here on Skye we understand.

Apologies if this has been answered before but I have a bit of a quandry.
Pentax SDM lenses keep getting mentioned on the forum for less than robust performance.
Is this true?
I guess what I am really asking is are they reliable or would my investment be better spent elsewhere.

I cannot afford to be in attendance at a clients wedding and be overly worried that my SDM lenses were going to
malfunction.
I admit to a certain level of paranoia after two Nikon F5's broke down within an hour of each other at a wedding
some years ago.
All opinions and advice gratefully appreciated.

I totally agree with what PeterKR has said.
The world of printers and inks is a veritable minefield.
One major consideration is just how serious are you about your printing and the accuracy of
print colours as seen in relationship to your monitor?

Most people will view a print they have produced and be quite pleased when using manufacturers ink and manufacturers paper and using the recommended settings.
However as you become more experienced and perhaps your interest and standards grow higher you will seriously need to think about calibrating your printer and your monitor, using the paper and inks of choice.
Just about everyone on this forum who is serious about printing will come up with a different combination of
printer, inks and paper. Pretty much as we did in the days of the wet darkroom. When we all had our favourite
paper, developer, fixer and toner.

I use Epson wide format printers and experimentation has brought me to the point where Epson inks on Ilford papers using Ilfords free ICC profiles gives me superb results. Ilford Gallerie gloss or smooth pearl for printing our greetings cards and Ilford Gold Fibre Silk for the fine art work.
We also have an Epson printer using Fotospeed inks to print matt finish images on Fotospeed 'High White Smooth' matt paper.
So you see we use paper of different grades and finishes and by different manufacturers and we truly get identical results (apart from the finish) from all the paper ink combos.
I have no doubt that other forum users have widely varying ink, paper, printer combinations.
It also has a lot to do with your 'style' a friend of mine has a hugely successful gallery and he prints only on matt papers. Using Epson Archival Matt for proofing and Fotospeed' High White Smooth' for his finished fine art work. His style of landscape photography is full of very gentle soothing pastel tones and his ink paper combo works just fine. For him. It won't suit everybody though.
My golden rule in all things is "Effort and quality on input equals reward and quality on output."

I'm not that familiar with Karl Grobl but I certainly am familiar with
James Nachtwey. I have a copy of his DVD 'War Photographer' which is a very compassionate and penetrative study of this genre of photography.