Thanks Steve - it's not a bad flash for the £20 I paid. It didn't want to talk to the K-m at first, but after I took the batteries out and wiggled the switch a few times it seemed to get the idea. It had probably been sitting in a wardrobe for some years!

I know that the RAW plugin for the GIMP only understands DNG files. Not much of a problem but it's a good job that I found this before I ended up with a card full of images in the wrong format!

Following my successful experiments with the AF200T I've bought an AF240Z, mostly as I wanted a swivel head. This turns out to work perfectly with the K-m if you put both in Program mode - as you change ISO on the camera it changes the aperture, just as the chart on the back of the flash suggests. I do have a few questions though:

There's a switch on the back marked "zoom". I understand how to set the flash for different lengths of lens (pulling or pushing the head) but I'm not sure whether this switch makes any difference? All it seems to do is change the effective distance display on the back, but I've no idea whether it also alters the flash output in some way?

Does anyone know the part number for the wide angle adapter (assuming that there is one)? The flash has a groove in the head to allow filters to fit, so I assume that some Pentax accessories were offered for it. In standard form it only goes to 35mm, which isn't especially wide on digital.

Finally, the flash came with a filter attached, I can only describe the colour as "sepia brown"! I've removed it, but why/when would anyone want to give the flash a brownish tinge?

You could also try the GIMP with the RAW plugin, as I will be doing soon.

95% of the time I shoot JPGs, as I find the results perfectly acceptable providing that I use the camera properly and I can get a lot more on an SD card that way. JPGs also seem less prone to causing the camera to shudder to a halt while writing images.

The remaining 5% is for one-off events - for example, I should be at an airshow this weekend (RIAT), as many of these displays will be one-off events I will be using RAW with a view to being able to rescue well composed but badly exposed shots. My view is that I have nothing to lose this way as I can still develop them in-camera (and I probably will do this with a few) but before doing so I can copy the lot to my external HD and play around in the GIMP to learn how to use it.

That's a very good price assuming it's clean and without scratches or fungus!

Hmm, I might turn it down to medium then. I usually shoot JPG as I find that most of the time the results are fine, it's faster and you can fit an awful lot more images on a given SD card. I will be using RAW for one-off events in future though as it does allow you to rescue wonky shots.

I've just found this in my K-m's menus. Is there any reason not to crank it up all the way, other than some people liking noise in the same way that they liked grain on film?

It does exactly what it claims to do, I'm just worried that it might be doing something horrible to my photos that I haven't noticed yet!

You might struggle to get it away from him after he gives it a try...

The A 35-105mm seems very sought after and therefore expensive. This focal length never seems to have been offered as a kit lens (this is why there are plenty of A and F 35-70mm zooms around) and most people would have bought a 70-210mm or similar as their second lens. As a result they're not particularly common.

http://kmp.bdimitrov.de/lenses/zooms/medium/F35-105f4-5.6.html

IMO you can't really go wrong with the SMC Pentax-F lenses.

The puzzling part is why a museum in Essen wants a photo of a disused railway station in Manchester!

Great photos BTW - I think the Disused Stations site might be interested in them too if you haven't already contributed.