I thought I'd said that nass!

I'm still a little puzzled as to how a small sensor bridge camera helps you, as in this case the crop factor will still be there but even more so.

If you really want a full frame DSLR there are a few on the market, at a price of course.

Well it is possible for camera to leak some light under extreme circumstances, but light entering the viewfinder will affect manual exposures just as much as auto ones if we use the camera meter to establish the exposure. The answer is to have the eye up against the viewfinder (although even this may not be enough under extreme lighting) or to use a hand or eyepiece blind to cover the viewfinder eyepiece.

30 seconds in bright sunlight is an unusual circumstance indeed that I have never tried out with any camera.

Light can't get to the sensor whilst the mirror is moving because the shutter is still closed. The shutter opens when the mirror is completely out of the way.

What is probablt happening is that in vertical orientation the light is affecting the metering from a more damaging angle. The easy thing to do is to hold a hand over the eyepiece, very close, but not touching as the camera might get knocked.

What a very curious thread that sort of sprang up spontaneously.

Moved to Pentax lenses section.

There's no real reason why the 35-80mm should give flat colours and unsharp images, so I would suspect it's faulty, perhaps having been damaged in some way.

The 18-55mm is a good general purpose lens in all its incarnations with either Pentax or Samsung names on it. The Samsung is the Mk I version and the DAL, DA II and DA WR versions are better optically.

The 70-200mm is fine, but not a replacement for the standard zoom, rather an extension to your repertoire. On its own it would be quite limiting for genreral purpose subjects.

The ideal starter combinations are either the 18-55mm and 50-200mm, or the 18-55mm and 55-300mm. An alternative in one lens, if you can find one, is the SMC Pentax-DA 18-250mm.

My brother-in-law bought a new K-x and didn't change batteries all week when we were all on holiday recently.

He was using the set that was supplied with the camera and they happily did more than 800 shots and were still going strong.

It depends very much on what you want to shoot.

The one that will extend your repertoire most is probably the Macro lens, which can also double up for landscapes and as a longish portrait lens.

The 10-17mm Fisheye isn't an alternative to a 10-20mm or 12-24mm lens, it's a specialised lens that has a totally different effect on the images. It's a great lens, but only if you are after the 180 degree fisheye images that is produces at 10mm. It's never really staright, but the effect does diminish as you zoom.

If you want straight lines, for example for architecture, then the SMC Pentax-DA 12-24mm f4 is the one. New it's outside your price range, but you might find a second hand one.

As regards JPEGs, just avoid AWB and use Daylight instead. Then you will record the actual colour of the ambient light. Don't forget to switch off the auto adjustment feature on the K20D and later though.

I do any fine adjustments to colour in Photoshop CS2 using Photo Filter, correcting colour just like I woulod have done with film, but after the image is shot rather than as it's shot.