Interesting link, thanks for posting it. It mentiones the Pentax lens as well, long discontinued!

As with many things, labels are attached that are more or less accurate depending upon the price level and veracity of the manufacturer.

Apochromatic means corrected for the three colours of light - RGB - and then of course we have degrees of correction. How well are the three colours corrected? There are some cheaper APO lenses that may not be better than non-apo ones of other makes.

Achromatic means corrected for two colours, blue and green, and that of course matched the spectrum of orthochromatic film. Colour photography demands at least an achromatic lens.

I don't think any Pentax lenses are labelled apochromatic. They have various glass types within them and appear to be well corrected though.

Moved to Your Photos section.

I rather like No. 3

The K5 is faster than the K20D. It is about the same as all the other cameras I've looked at recently. To be honest there hasn't been much of a problem with any of them. It's possible that the Sony A33 was slightly slower than the Pentaxes.

In terms of wildlife i found the K-5 to be significantly faster than previous models.

All these comments refer to the standard focus-priority setting, so I presume that if required it could be faster still.

Did this happen when you were out in sub-zero temperatures?

You're right, if you change the aperture the shutter speed will compensate. To give less or more exposure, use the Exposure Compensation control. I have this set on the front dial and the aperture adjustment set on the rear dial.

Don't forget to turn back the compensation when it's no longer needed!

Koodachrome is not very good for scanning, how about using a macro lens, placing the slide on a light box and copying that way? It will take a lot of care to get a good result, but it can work.

I'm sure they will be delighted with these!

The software bundled with the camera is basic, but useful if it's the only RAW converter you have.

A better approach is to use a card reader to transfer the images to the computer. This is not expensive and car readers are widely available.

Then a program to manipulate the images, perhaps Photoshop Elements. If you only want very simple adjustments, then something may be bundled with Windows or perhaps a free download from the web.

Personally, I don't ever load the software that comes with a camera and as I use JPEG capture I don't need a RAW converter either.