Hi thanks for your help, I picked up an A30 for £99 delivered, just about to have aplay with it now.

I'm looking for a pocket compact, preferably 8meg or more with plenty of manual control. I'd like to keep it below £150. I've seen other such threads further down the board but they are quite old, and there seem to be so many to choose from in the pentax family.

I have a vivitar Series 1 70-210 f2.8 A zoom which is in perfect condition (and which I love). I have an interested buyer but I'm not really sure what price I should ask?
Any advice please?
John

My lad (14 year old) is saving for his first digital slr having used various other digital cameras and occasionally borrowed my film slr's and my *Istds.
I have a few old KA lenses he can borrow along with a couple of new fangled autofocus things. He's reading plenty of photography books at the moment and is an intelligent lad (bit like his Dad), so I'm sure he'll be able to pick things up fairly quickly.
He'll soon have approx £300 saved, and I'll add a little to it- probably up to approx £400. Can you give advice on which DSLR new or used he should go for please?

The file tab in my menu just says "serial number" next to it - no figures. I was actually asking as I am thinking of buying a used one for my son to learn with- but it will have to last him.[/i]

........me how many pics I've taken with it over the last two years?
cheers
john

Thanks very much for the advice, I've bid on a flash trigger, so I'll let you know how i get on.
just planning some portrait practice which is a bit of a diversion from my normal, sports, wildlife, architecture shots, so hopefully this will help.

Thanks again guys. I've made myself a couple of backgrounds, one in matt black and one in a creamy/sandy colour, both approx 2.5metresx3metres with fabric from a local shop; cost less than £15 for the two. My wife bought me an 80 cm reflector for christmas which i am hoping will come in handy.
I want to try natural (window) light for head and shoulders shots with a black background, but figured it would be interesting to try the flash from various angles too.
I would like to go down the studio lighting route, but need to convince the wife (and to some extent myself) first, as I have other expensive hobbies, including Koi carp, motorcycles and football as well as photography. and all on a poor nurse's pay........

Hi George, thanks for your swift reply. Could you expand on this a little?

you might just as well use a bog-standard remote trigger and manual exposure setting like a normal studio set-up

In all honesty I have never been near a studio, and so have no idea what a normal set up is. By remote trigger are you saying infra red? would it fire camera and flash together?

I have an af330ftz, which i sometimes use with the istds and was wondering if it can be used off camera with some sort of connecting cable? I know there are better flashes available with slave modes etc but my budget cannot stretch to that at the minute- are cables an option?