Hiya Roscoe!

Welcome to the forum.

I have the 80-320, I was considering selling it a few weeks ago but I've changed my mind, I dont know about it being soft at the long end though, TBH I think it outperforms my several times the cost "Bigma"

Your MZ7 shutter, do you just get a whining noise and it refuses to fire? my MZ5n did the same

Well my new 16-50 seems to be OK as does the 50-135

All my fears it seems were totally unfounded (I think) I am really pleased I took Nathans advice and got this lens over the 17-70.

I still cant get over the speed of the focus, I took them both along to my camera club this week and first up to view was a fellow K10D owner, I made sure the 16-50 was well out of focus on a designated spot, I handed him the camera and suggested he point it there, he pressed the shutter, exclaimed "NO WAY" and took the camera from his eye to look it over, I got the impression he was looking for a trick of some sort

While I'm here I may as well come to the defence of Canon owners and say they are not all anti-Pentax morons, several members showed a positive interest in both K20D and the lenses, one was especially surprised at the price of the 16-50 compared to the canon and nikon equivelents especially as it included the coatings and sealing, bemoaning his own lenses been full of dust, other praises for the Pentax were the built in SR, the Hyper-Program mode, the adjustment for different lenses, the one touch RAW button was mentioned, and most of all the weather sealing

Need I say more?

Freaky Looks like an albino of the green one we saw earlier on no doubt they are related species.

Nice shots, despite the fact that its rude to watch someone eating

As a School Govenor surely you should already be CRB checked?

...and as such you are deemed "safe" to work with children and vulnerable people, your integrity should be under no suspicion whatsoever. True, the CRB check is not always a 100% safeguard but people should give you the benefit of the doubt, otherwise whats the point in having them.

I assume there will be other adults present while you are photographing so I cant really see a problem, I do agree with others replys regarding signed permission from parents though.

Welcome to the forum John, hope your enjoying your "decent" K10D, obviously someone at this outlet wasn't doing their job properly

Can I say what a decent guy you must be, only leaving nuetral feedback after recieving a faulty item, many ebayers would have gone straight in with a negative....you can buy off me anytime

Of course your problem could be a combination of all three of the faults listed in these replys, a faulty cell, the charger, the cold weather, also remember that rechargables dont last forever and over a period of time they will fail to hold their charge.

Try draining one set completely, a good way is to use a small torch that takes one AA cell, just leave it switched on untill the battery is dead, repeat for the other three then charge them up again together.

Mine is only a cheap system from a computer market, I bought it with the printer, the only link I can find to the same manufacturer is here http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Signal-Inkjet-Supplies_CIS-Systems_W0QQfsubZ6

I reckone Ive saved ten time the cost of the ink system over the last couple of years, the prints might not have the lifespan of those done with Epson inks but if you want something thats going to last you need to have it done commercially anyway.

If you want something thats a bit more up-market I hear the Perma-Jet system is very good, but you'd have to check out its compatability with any given printer.

Hope this helps.

Sorry, forgot....

I bought some panoramic paper on a roll from a computer fair, its not exactly Epson but its dammed good for what I paid, its the same width (or should that be height) as A4 but you cut it as long (wide) as you need before feeding it into the printer. its cheap enough to waste when problems occur like yours.

As for longevity, I use Signal inks in a continous system on the R300, they go down onto Epson photo glossy a treat and on the cheapo panoramic paper a print lasted 18months in direct sunlight before starting to fade.

I've done a bit of panoramic printing and was extremely careful to make sure the paper size was correctly selected each and every time, even when doing one print straight after another, I have had my Epson R300 reset to the default A4 after finishing a print, if this is whats happened in your case it would explain the half picture.
Did the printer finish half of it then churn the entire piece of paper out? if so it sounds like you printer thought it was printing on A4.

Well I now for a fact that ewen_r has one and recently won one of our camera clubs yearly competitions with a panel of 4 monochrome prints, all taken with the GX20 of course. It was most gratifying to see a Samsung owner and a relative newcomer to photography beating all the "competition" (thats forum speak for Canikons)

Having seen Ewens GX20 is what spured me on to buy the K20D (i'm a snob and wanted the Pentax :blush

I must confess I did find the menus a little confusing, but who needs menus unless your forever changing your settings?

Dont know about the grip.