SDHC is simply High capacity version of SD. Whatever you can buy you can use.

The benefit of a larger capacity card is that it holds more images, the downside is that if the card becomes faulty then you could lose more images as well.

I tend to use cards up to 2GB, but mostly 512MB and 1GB.

We'll forgive you Robert! Nannying is a dirty job, but someone's got to do it...

Yes it will certainly be repairable and you could check out Asahi Photo and Harrow Technical plus others that advertise Pentax repairs at the back of Amateur Photographer and other magazines.

It won't be cost effective though and it would be financially better to just buy an S1a that works.

However, as you say this camera has a sentimental value then that changes the equation and if it changes it enough then the money spent will be worthwhile.

I'll go with what Matt says on this one.

However, who said Pentax sales were falling? Sales are as far as I know steadily increasing, helped along no doubt with the extra market opportunities that Samsung brings.

It's a tough market and ther's a long way to go, but the Pentax product is the best one for me.

Silver looks fine when it's high quality anodised metal, superb when it's brass underneath...but in those far off days ("in ancient times") amteurs aspired towards owning that professional black finish...it was more expensive and wore off more easily, but it still was the desireable version.

Personally I prefer plastic finishes to be black.

I go for hood rather than filter as well. My logic being that unless the filter is needed for some photographic effect then its presence can only detract from the optical quality.

The 16-45mm is a superb lens and at £199 a real bargain.

I presume we are talking about the 200mm macro lens, which is a very fine beast indeed. And very expensive.

OK, could it be that the shutter speed has been different? The alternative must be that the camera has released with different delays. I'm not sure that I would expect the camera mechanism itself to vary much in response time but if the shutter speed set has been diffent maybe that has been a factor.

Perhaps some horses are significantly faster than others and the difference is more than the expected 2 to 3 inches?

Other than that, I'm out of ideas but I'll think about it....

If your trigger device works when the horses are crossing the line it could be as much as 100ms (milliseconds) later that the camera shutter actually fires. In this time, fast moving horses will have moved past the trigger point.

I would suggest moving the trigger point back slightly, so the system has time to fire and anticipates the position of the horses at the ctiyical point, i.e. on the line.