I now have a mental image Techno of you at Christmas - ripping parcels apart and scattering packaging as you dive into the pile of presents under the tree...

We'll get to the camera soon - in the meantime I'm savouring the first sips of a fine wine, so to speak.

But, just as a taster, the X90 is in metallic blue. Very tasteful.

I've been given one of these as a present! It's our 35th Wedding Anniversary soon you see, and I have a lovely, kind and considerate wife...

Battery is charging now, but what strikes me is that no review ever seems to appreciate the quality of the trappings. Nice box, sturdily made, high quality inserts, good packaging and printing, and even the battery when it's unwrapped is a solid, beautifully made piece of kit.

And we haven't even got to the camera! Essentially an optio design with a huge lens on the front, we shall see very soon what it delivers. In any event, bridge cameras can be very useful for eBay pictures and ultra close-ups. Maybe the massive zoom lens will be good for some wildlife as well.

I'll report back soon.

A teleconverter rarely offers any quality and it won't do well at all on such a wide ranging zoom. Apart from the two stop loss of light, which means a very dim lens at the long end.

The most likely useful 40mm is probably going to be a Tokina 80-400mm. Although not a common lens, they are found from time to time and they perform quite well.

It is done.

It's their little joke Jack, nothing more. Meant to be whimsical.

Ken beat me to it, but I second what he said.

I've corretced the typo in the title.

My file structure might look something like this:

K20D 001 Dunham Massey 07 06 2010
K20D 002 Muncaster 08 06 2010 1
K20D 003 Muncaster 08 06 2010 2
K20D 004 Muncaster 08 06 2010 3

Each folder will be an SD card full of JPEG images. I find that's enough info to find most originals.

When the images are used, then the processed version goes into an approprtae folder. Individual images are still prefixed with a number, which keeps them in the right order in the folder.

So a folder of Muncaster Castle for Web might start off containing
001 Library
002 Library 2
003 Stained Glass Window

and so on.

My eBay and EPZ folders are predicatably labelled:

EPZ 2010-01
EPZ 2010-02
EPZ 2010-03

and so on.....

It's never been a bad thing to try and be helpful.

Interesting points.

I teach a lot of beginners photography and it's surprising how many people have expensive kit that never comes off those settings. Never assume anything, those preset modes might just be the buying point that clinches it for a lot more people than get involved in web forums and camera clubs.

Focus points - never use them. Centre point only, which you can see whether there's a little red dot glowing or not. Focus on main area required, half press on shutter release, recompose and fire. Simple enough.

Obviously there are a couple of other refinements to this. As well as the red dot, we can actually see with our own eyes the point of focus snap into sharpness. If it's not quite right, then Pentax lenses with Quick Shift are a real advantage, making a final tweak possible.

Other exceptions to this technique are some moving subjects and some subjects that are not suitable for AF. One still subject not suitable for AF might be some macro work (use manual focus) and where we want to pre-focus on a spot on, say, a race track. Again, manual focus.

The thing that stops me buying K-x cameras (and the colours might be an eye-catcher shooting a wedding) are the AA batteries. Much quicker in the field to change a Li-Ion battery pack.

If nothing comes up, as a last resort format the card in the camera and then try again. Crazy though it sounds, doing that can repair things enough for the recovery software to pull some more files out.

We have done it and it works - we used Art Plus.