What I will say:

The manual is only important when you want to use a specific feature. Other than that if you switch the camera to Av mode and play around you'll learn a lot. Try putting the camera on a tripod or other stable platform then shooting the same subject close up at different apertures, this will demonstrate depth of field very quickly. I find Lego very effective for playing with macro as the studs are precisely spaced, so you can see how far in front of or behind your focus point things remain sharp.

I am awaiting my black ME Super and 28-85mm Tokina zoom...

and I've also finally managed to bag a K 28mm f3.5 - the legend which is supposed to be even sharper than the M series version! £45 in good condition with non-original caps, which looked a fair price considering how infrequently they appear and the usual prices they fetch. Just wish they'd both turn up as I want to try the zoom with my Super A for a few B&W studies of building ornamentation here.

Yep, that's what I meant by a roundabout way - people see "Zeiss" and go mad rather than looking at which of the various companies to hold the name made it.

I tried one of the '80s "Carl Zeiss Jenazoom" badged 70-200mm against an M 80-200mm and the Pentax won comfortably.

It's expensive because it has "Zeiss" on it, I've even seen this extend to the not-actually-Zeiss lenses from the 1980s where the UK importer for some brands like Cosina slapped the CZJ name on generic Japanese-made glass.

While the original Zeiss made some stunning lenses for their time I can't see how they're better than, for example, the K series primes. Nissan make a sportscar capable of thumping anything currently made in Germany, and Japan long ago became the place to go for reliable good quality electronics. As a culture Japan excels at precision engineering.

I use them if I have one. So that's the 18-55mm and the lenses with a retractable hood, as it's tricky and expensive to get hold of the genuine hoods for things like an M 28mm f3.5.

It's also handy for un-sticking screwed together lens parts - like the ring holding in the rear element of a lens which has frequently had a lick of black paint applied to seal it to the rest of the lens. Just drip a tiny amount of lighter fuel, leave it for a few minutes, and it should unscrew.

Lighter fuel will do the trick too, in my experience!

I'm not keen on captions beyond possibly something simple stating where the image was taken.

It depends on the audience. If you have tedious relatives who say "what're we looking at here" rather than actually looking at the photo and working out what it is then captions in simple language can be useful...

No, they do not need the drive motors as they use the auto focus drive built into the camera body (screw drive, as it's sometimes called).

Taking the lens designations apart:

DA - Pentax use this to designate their digital lenses - previously they have made K, M, A, F, and FA lenses

L - lightweight - these are the kit lenses with plastic mounts and no quick shift, but identical optics to the normal DA lenses

f3-5-5.6 means that the lens will open up to f3.5 at the 18mm end, but only f5.6 at the 55mm end of the zoom range. If you put the camera into Av mode, set the lens to 18mm, set the aperture to f3.5 and then slowly turn the zoom ring you'll see the indicated aperture on the LCD change as you zoom in.

"f stop" as in f3.5 is a measure of aperture. Basically the smaller the aperture the larger the number, and the less light passes through the lens. However, with larger apertures your depth of field (how in-focus things in front of or behind your subject are) will be shallower - useful for portraits where you want to isolate the person from the background, not so much for macro photography where you want the whole subject in focus. You need to think in terms of balancing the desired depth of field with the available light and shutter speed - say if you're shooting hand held in low light then you will often have to settle for a wider aperture in order to use a high enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake.

I'm just worried what he typed into Google to get that image!