Here's a poll about improvement. Do we think we are better photographers now than one year ago? Or are we getting worse or just treading water?

How do you rate your own progress?

Please leave a message to say why you think as you do and also what could be done to improve if that's what you feel is needed.

A 50mm f2 lens (for example) with a 2x converter makes a usable 100mm f4 macro lens focusing to 1:2 or thereabouts.

How about the Pentax User insurance? You could always get a quote. Otherwise, check out AP or other magazines as several companies regularly advertise.

Contents insurance can be a good way to go. Our All Risks section covers valuables for up to 60 days when abroad.

With Photoshop you can make a pseudo-infrared image out of any file.

Use Channel Mixer. Selecte Monochrome. Increase red and green, reduce blue to virtually nothing and tweak the red and green to get the contrast right.

Here's an example from my EPZ K-r review:
http://www.ephotozine.com/articles/pentax-k-r-14989/images/pentax_kr_pseudo_IR.j...

You'll get it sorted I'm sure.

It's down to personal preference, but I tend to make an A3 image and save it unsharpened. I then sharpen before printing (Unsharp Mask) or resize for web and then sharpen as appropriate for the smaller web image, also using Unsharp Mask.

The 18-250mm is an excellent travel lens and should cover most eventualities. The 10-20mm will add some ultra-wide potential. The 10-17mm will give to the chance to experiment a bit. If you're worried about damaging it, there's no point having it if that means you don't take it anywhere.

As for insurance, that's really essential.

The W80 is also needed and could be very handy to carry everywhere.

Simple Auto operation should be possible with most cameras as the flashgun cuts itself off when enough light has been received by its sensor.

If you are maximising DOF the easy "rule of thumb" is simply to focus one third of the way into the scene. The scene is defined as the area containing the nearest and furthest objects that you want to be in focus.

The DOF will be the same at any given focal length for both the prime lenses and the zoom. You might therefore just note what your focus distance has been and just set the zoom to the same. No need to focus at all through the viewfinder, just compose.

Finally, set the focal length on the zoom before focusing if you do use the viewfinder for focus. Not all zooms hold focus accurately when they are zoomed.

The other simple thing to do is take a photo of the location that will identify it. The plaque that says "Bolton Abbey" or whatever else is around.

Just get on with it.

Whenever something goes wrong, people post on a forum. When things go right they say nothing, usually at least. So we hear about every problem going.

To redress the balance, we have two K-5s here that have so far experienced no problems whatsoever.