My suggestions would be to read lots of photographic books and magazines, experiment with meter readings over and under what the camera recommends, use slide film so you can see what you're really getting without lab printing trying to compensate, if you can find a progressive camera club join and see what others are doing.

You're a little far away to join ADAPS (Atherton & District Amateur Photographic Society) but we welcome new members and try to help everyone as much as possible. I'm sure there are other clubs who have the same open approach and perhaps this would be useful.

Otherwise, keep practicing and makes notes of what you do to help you improve technique.

In the MX instruction book there is a table that indicates the MX metering range.

At 200 ASA 1 second will be outside the meter's range
At 400 ASA 1 sec and 1/2 sec will be
At 800 ASA 1, 1/2 and 1/4 will be
At 1600 ASA up to 1/8 will not meter
At 25ASA 1/500 with an f1.4 lens will be unrelaible at f22 and 1/1000 will be unreliable so should be used with caution
At 50 ASA a similar caution with the f1.4 lens at 1/1000

This is a normal condition of the meter and is not a fault - it reflects the limits of operation effectiveness of the meter.

Rather than use the camera software, I prefer to use a card reader and download the pictures straight into a folder. Then these original files are copied onto a CD, which becomes the archive "negative". If any files are opened in Photoshop, any resaving is done as a TIFF to prevent any degradation.

This is a good, sharp optic that I use routinely. There is some barrel distortion at the wide end, but I don't mind that for pictorial subjects and it isn't too obtrusive. The bayonet lens hood is a nice touch - finally caught up with 1950's TLR design!

We use a card reader and open the files directly into Photoshop, which will happily open most file types including TIFF and JPEG, the usual ones.

We then save the pictures as TIFFs into folders labelled "John's Unmodified" and "Sue's Unmodified" ready for further processing.

One point about a card reader - have you installed the drivers for it?

On the subject of storing files when on holiday, we have opted for the Photainer (aka Flashtrax) which is a portable hard drive of 20, 40 or 80 GB into which you just plug your CF card and press the "download" button. Easy as pie. You can check and review the pictures on the inbuilt screen. The cost is now more reasonable and it seems a very sttractive choice!

I have used this technique also, but only for preparing pictures for powerpoint presentations, not for high quality prints. It works quite well but there is a loss of quality - probably because most lenses are not optimised for the very close distances involved. An enlarger lens on a bellows might be more successful.

The best solution is to use a scanner for slides such as a Nikon Coolscan or similar, but for a large quantity the process is pitifully slow.

For larger formats than 35mm slides I would try a good lightbox and use a camera to make copies, but all the lights in the room should be switched off and it would take a lot of care in the copying. Again, a very slow process if a large number of slides is involved.

Frankly, I'm leaving my slides as they are as an archive and scanning them as required. Life is too short...

You could try cleaning the battery contacts to make sure there is no oxidation that is causing poor contact. The battery also needs to be the correct way round - see the marks in the battery chamber to check polarity is correct.

Other than these simple checks there is not much else that can be done without sending the camera in for repair.

It goes back a lot further than that. In the Korean war supplies of the new (to the West) Nikon and Canon rangefinder cameras started to find their way into the hands of the press photographers of the day, and they were staggered at the (especially Nikon) lens quality. The Japanese lenses were very contrasty compared to the leica and Contax (Zeiss) lenses they copied, and very, very sharp. So the 1950s saw the upsurge in the Japanese rangefinder systems.

In 1959 Nikon made a second major coup by introducing this quality to the SLR - the Nikon F, with especially its superb 200mm lens. Nikon built upon this reputation by building robust camera bodies, frequently shown working after being dropped from helicopters and immersed in buckets of water! And superb lenses.

Nikon became the professional camera. Pentax made their coup in 1964 with the introduction of the Spotmatic and the first fish eye lens that could be used without locking up the mirror. The stuff os the swinging sixties, but with more of an advanced amateur appeal with some professional use.

Canon have taken a similar path to Nikon but by being always at the cutting edge of the next development. They have and do make professional cameras and lenses, although they have never appealed to me much.

Pentax have only tried one proper professional system, the LX. A superb camera, but doomed to commersial failure in the market dominated by the Nikon F series.

I prefer the operational features of the pentax cameras, but if I didn't use Pentax I would use Nikon.