I've found that Halfords primers are fine on plastics too. I tend to find GW white a bit poor really, although the black is great.

Take the camera with you everywhere you go, and keep the 35-70mm lens attached to it as that'll be the most useful of your collection for most situations. That way you won't miss anything that would make a good photo.

Read about depth of field, and get used to using your camera in Av or Aperture Priority mode. Controlling depth of field with your aperture is probably the most important thing to learn in photography as it enables you to produce a lot of effects, such as isolating a portrait subject from the background (or equally capturing a flower in perfect focus while the concrete wall behind is a blur).

Think about buying a film scanner, or if the lab you take it to will produce a CD along with the prints. I'm guessing most of your friends probably have digital compact cameras of some sort, the SFX will easily outperform them for image quality this way. I know I've had some very nice results from scanning black and white negatives shot with various old Pentax film bodies.

I've never used anything extensively other than the GIMP, so I can't comment on what other packages are like compared to it, but it's great. I did try Picasa but found it very sluggish and resource-hungry, plus it doesn't work well on netbooks due to its desire to add all of your photos to a library (which doesn't help when you use an external drive to store them, which isn't always plugged in).

There is a plugin to handle RAW files named UFRaw, which will handle all the adjustments you might want to make.

Get some OS maps, find the legal rights of way near you, and give it a go! You'll find some cracking scenery to photograph and have a great time too. Here's my Disco pretending to be a boat on a byway near me:




Note: Joining a reputable 4x4 club is strongly recommended, if only because you'll have someone to tow you out if you get stuck!

Is that all year round or only when they've got half the media industry of London (who're used to paying more than that) in town for the festival?

With regards to wide angle flash coverage, surely this is one of those times when a 35mm lens is a 35mm lens, regardless of whether it's on a film or an APS-C sensor body? I know I get very dark corners from a flash intended to work with a 35mm lens if I use it with an 18mm. Add the cheap diffuser I mentioned elsewhere and all is well, even with direct flash.

The AF200T won't be quite like that - I was thinking about my AF240Z at the time.

On the AF200T if you set the camera to "P" and the flash to either red or green Auto mode you'll get basic communication. The camera will set the correct aperture and shutter speed when the flash is ready. Just make sure that the lens you're using can open to the aperture the flash wants - IIRC the red mode will try to set to f4 at 100 ISO, which is only possible with the kit lens when it's set to 18mm or so.

I can't remember what effect changing the ISO has on this flash - you'll have to try it and find out.

What impresses me is that Pentax included the old Program flash compatibility in the K-m. They could just as easily have said "P-TTL or manual, that's all", but they didn't.

On the K-m with a program flash you vary aperture by changing the ISO setting. A bit crude, but it works and you'd probably end up using a similar technique manually (unless you're using an AF200T in which case you have manual control over the power output). Interestingly mine will pick suitable apertures in between the settings listed on the back of the flash too.

It's working now, turned out my router needed rebooting!

Just been sorting through my RIAT photos in an effort to find a decent one to click "share" on, as there are a fair number of the Battle of Britain memorial flypast in there.

Is Youtube working for anyone else? It isn't for me!