This is really repeating your other thread, so please refer to that. Otherwise we'll have two sets of respones.

See: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/kr---af-fine-adjustment-29444

Bag that alloows easy access, spare battery and several 4GB cards should serve well.

As for the lenses, start with the two lens kit, which will be very versatile and well priced. WR lenses and K-5 also mean you can explore photography in the rain.

There may be technically better lenses, but all these work well and can produce sharp, vibrant images.

Not knowing how you went about this, it strikes me that at the long end the camera has an easier job of focusing with the limited DOF available. At the wide end it's harder to find the point of focus. This is true for our eyes as well, when we manually focus.

However, at the wider end the increased DOF covers up any small focusing errors.

I suspect that there's some other reason for your findings.

Try photographing a newspapoer pinned to a wall. Use a tripod and make sure the camera back is parallel. Fill the frame at the wide angle end and see which text id sharp. Bear in mind though that curvature of field may mean that at wide apertures the centre can be inj focus but not the edges, and vice-versa.

There's no reason to avoid using the wide end of zoom lenses. You might as well have a fixed focal length if this was so.

Indeed Mike, there are many good lenses to be had on eBay. I may be putting a few on myself soon.

It's popular to knock the banks, but Internet transfers can be almost instantaneous, all the control is with the sender.

PayPal exists for those we don't know and offers some prtection.

In terms of business, I accept cash, cheques and PayPal. It's customer service that counts and having too proscriptive a policy can put good customers off. A few well known clients will get billed and will send me payment in due course.

The composition is about right for me, the only thing missing is a glint in the eye. This sort of photography is not easy and you've done very well to produce an image as good as this.

I'm slowly getting into wildlife photography and it is very challenging. Knowing the names of all the creatures is another problem....

Fantastic freedom thanks to the the rugged construction and waterproof and coldproof features.

I take my W90 everywhere, and the WG-1 is even tougher!

To be honest, that 18-250mm is just about as ideal as a travel lens could be. Is it really that bulky?

An alternative would be the Pentax 18-135mm, but that's a very expensive alternative.

The only comment I wish to make is that when I reffered to "sixty years of photographic experience" I am referring to the 60 or so years of articles, books and general refernce material that supports the general rule of thumb quoted.

Rules of thumb are generalised guidelines that are useful in the field and it's important to realise that they are very valuable to beginners. We don't want to confuse beginners with pedantry.

You're at variance with sixty years of photographic experience Stefan, so the weight of decades of literature is not with you.

The figures I have quoted are from the DOF tables, taken from the Asahi pentax manual, but I would never use those and never have. It's simply not necessary.

I don't have anything more to add.