Cheap mirror lnese were an attractive proposition to lots of photographers and most of them weren't used much because the quality was dreadful.

Someone made a good 350mm mirror once (who was that?) and the Tamron 500mm is supposed to be fine. Pentax also made some very long mirror lenses, even a zoom, and these too should be fine.

Bear in mind that even on a tripod the slightest vibration will destroy sharpness. Also totally clear atmospheric conditions are necessary. Any suggestion of haze will end your quest for sharpness at a stroke.

The SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm is the standard zoom for your *istDS. It is not expensive, but it is perfectly good for most purposes.

There are certain designs of Billingham bag (Alice, Hadley, Packington) that enable very easy access to camera and lenses without messing with zips and padded tops that open the wrong way.

These designs are slim and rest well against the body and offer the highest possible quality of manufacture. They also don't scream out "Camera Bag!" quite so loudly. My black Hadley is barely noticed.

Within Hadley I have a K10D, 12-24mm, 16-45mm, 50mm, 50-200mm, cards, spare battery, torch and still plenty of room ro re-arrange things and perhaps include a flashgun or film body if I wanted to.

The Superflex internal dividers/padding are also very versatile and easy to adjust. They are also very substantial and absorb shock well.

I have always used Billingham since being introduced to them by Kevin MacDonnell's articles in the 1960s/70s. They have become much better since then.

Slightly tongue-in-cheek, this item might be called the Never Ready Case.

Every time you wanted to change a card or battery you would have to take off the case. IMHO, more trouble than it's worth and not at all missed.

This has been heavily covered in the forum, but in summary pre-A lenses will work with some limitations and a few potential exposure problems. It can be done, but it's not necessarily all that convenient.

Your Macro and 24-90 will serve you very well and the 16-45 is an excellent choice of lens. If you need something wider, the 12-24mm is also superb.

If you have the Pentax 15mm f3.5 I think this is very heavy and bulky as a 22.5mm-equivalent lens and it may not be the best design for digital.

These can be excellent lenses, but incredibly heavy compared to the current DA series. In that sense, although perfectly useable, I'm not so sure that they are an ideal match for the DSLRs.

Personally, on the grounds of ergonomics and efficiency, I have settled just about 100% on the new lenses. Any older ones in use are just for fun or experimentation.

About right probably.

For my own site I decided there was no point adding a gallery when I had hundreds of pictures on ePHOTOzine, so there is a link to my EPZ page instead.

For a club it's a different matter, unless members e-mailed you images and you put one a day in a club EPZ portfolio. Thinking about it, it could work because images from members will only arrive sposmadically at best.

For advice ask the webmaster at our own club site - post a message on the forum at www.adaps.org.uk or e-mail [email protected]

You could also ask for advice of the webmaster at www.lcpu.org.uk where we use Coppermine galleries to provide the Gallery.

See the note on page 200 of the manual.

Record Mode menu>Memory Screen>File number should be ticked.

The company i work for uses Dell laptops, and mine has been fine in terms of reliablity. The screen is useless for imaging though.

Our own laptop is a Toshiba with a diamond screen, and that is much better. We actually bought from Comet as the price and spec were right. I guess you need to check out the offers very carefully as bargains do crop up from time to time.

However, for imaging, you can't beat a good CRT in the quality/cost ratio stakes.