My 16-50 is the portrait replacement for when I can't get far enough back with the 50-135

Apart from the distortion at the wide end I don't think there's any difference in quality between it and the 50-135, although it's not very flattering at 16mm either

I always thought "flat" referred to lighting and the telephoto effect referred to as "compressed" :

PS: very nice shot Don.

Difficult to get them with their feet showing, they either have them covered with feathers (like this) or ankle deep in water

There seems to be a lot of noise there for ISO200 though:

I knew shooting steam trains wan't good for your health

Forget the speedy recovery Cliff, put your feet up and take it easy for as long as you like

I thought aliens had arrived in Bradford for a minute

I think we all recognise that name.

It's a bit belated, but well done Peter

Nothing to offer re Win8, still got XP on the Laptop and Vista on the PC, they both do what I want so can't see the point in updating.

Get rid of Driver Manager for a start, software like that is only designed to prey on peoples ignorance, there may well be 25 drivers that are out of date but that doesn't mean they NEED updating and you'd be buying software that's not likely to improve very much..

Is your PC working OK? if so why bother to update drivers, this only needs to be done if your having any software issues like programme crashes etc.

Most drivers can be updated quite easily if you know where to look and what to do, pointless trying to describe how here without knowing what operating system/version you have but generally speaking for Windows it's usually done under Device Manager.

EDIT: Sorry, missed the XP home bit
What drivers is it telling you to update?

I'm going to PM the Mods and ask that Barrie gets a 7 day ban, he knows damn well that we only allow posting of images taken with a Pentax

don't let too much success get to your head Shaun, or you'll end up switching to Canon

Well done.