My advice would be to get onto ebay and buy a couple of hoods. Don't just go for the generic ones that screw into filter threads, you can buy copies of the Pentax ones which clip onto the bayonet fitting around the front of the lens. Here is one for the 18-55mm, here is one to fit the 55-300mm.

The official Pentax ones are scarily expensive, and to be honest resale value isn't likely to be much with a kit lens anyway. They've made thousands if not millions of them so they're never likely to be rare.

Yep, Pentax made an adapter ring to go from M37 to M42. They do pop up from time to time, although if looking at third party copies you need to beware the same infinity focus problems which some M42-K adapters have.

All of the Pentax DSLRs seem to hold their value pretty well. I was looking at prices for the *ist D a while ago (decided not to bother as despite the extra features it's still an older, lower resolution sensor than my K-m) and they seem to be holding at around the £150-£180 mark for an almost ten year old camera from reputable sources.



Did that on Saturday - had the K-m and original KM with me! Shooting digital to stitch for panoramas and B&W film for the detail it brings out in stonework.

If you're looking at the older MF lenses then don't bother with the Pentax-M 28mm f2.8. The f3.5 version is in a different class, whether you buy the M series version or its ancestor, the legendary SMC Pentax 28mm f3.5 (Commonly known as part of the K series, although Pentax never used that designation).

I'm likely to be getting a DA 35mm f2.4 as a birthday present in late November, so will be using that as my walkabout lens from then on.

I don't think you can go wrong with the 18-55mm WR, it feels very solidly made and is optically identical to the MK2 DA and DA L versions which are probably the best kit lenses on any DSLR.

You might want to think about some sort of wrist strap for the camera to avoid the risk of it going overboard. While the sealing might just cope with getting soaked with salt water it doesn't enable the camera to float!

That's all very well, but what will this "Marco" do? I don't really need an assistant!

The long stand has backfired before now...

One enthusiastic newbie was given the instruction to find one. So, as anyone would now, they got online and found the website for their firm's main supplier. A long stand turned out to exist, however as a piece of high-precision surveying equipment it did not come cheap. The manager's prank ended up costing the company over a thousand pounds when the trainee put in an order for the item he'd been asked to find!

Until very recently you could still buy bags of nails from them by weight. If you let the A Team loose in there you'd probably have a fully functioning nuclear missile within 24hrs!

It turned up over on Mud Club (4x4 forum) as well. The general opinion was "Pair of complete nutters"!

Weirdly our local Tesco isn't doing any harm at all.

The only shops worth visiting here are either selling things Tesco don't (we have a proper old-fashioned ironmongers which sells lamp wick by the metre and has cast iron firebaskets in stock), or they're occupying niches Tesco don't bother with (hippy wholefood shop which labels sea salt as "Non GM". Quite what genetic modification would be possible in a mineral even if desired seems to escape them...).

The only place losing business to Tesco is the local Somerfield/Co-op, where the staff are so miserable and the customers so slow that you'd have good grounds to decide a zombie apocalypse had begun and run amok with a cricket bat!