Ilford are in receivership, citing a 26% fall in demand over the last seven months.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a2c9322c-f56a-11d8-85e9-00000e2511c8.html

Sad news, though not surprising.

I suggest you ask the Pocket Wizard people. And take out a mortgage. It's nice kit, but not cheap.

The wireless remote has quite a limited range. As an alternative, you can use wires, and considerably extend the effective range.

I believe there is no Windows 98 driver for this camera. You will need to upgrade to ME or XP.

None of us is perfect. I myself am particularly susceptible to draughts.

There is only one way to spell reciprocity. Anything else is either an error or a different word. Think of reciprocate or reciprocal.

I think it's unlikely that the light is bright enough.

I don't know much about your camera, but I suspect that you won't have much luck trying to get it to work with a separate flash unit.

You could try buying a couple of 500W halogen lights (about a tenner at B&Q), and bouncing them off a white wall or other white object.

One more thing, on top of JR's point, is that generally macro lenses differ from standard lenses in two ways:

They tend to have a flatter field of focus (so if you photograph a wall, the ends will be in focus as well as the middle), and

They can focus closer.

Neither of these qualities impinges in any way on their usefulness for non-macro photography. There would be no benefit in buying an ordinary 50mm lens, unless you specifically wanted a wider maximum aperture.

Optically, the lens is superb.

However:

If you just want it for macro, then auto-focus is not a huge benefit.

Many macro photographers prefer 100mm to 50mm because you can work at a significantly greater distance from the subject.

All Pentax macro lenses are excellent, so as long as it's a good price, go for it.

Yes, set the shutter and aperture to whatever you want in manual mode. The flash will be triggered whatever the settings.