I'm looking to get a printer just for printing pictures. I have an (oldish) HP 6980 which I 've had for about 10 years and is an excellent general printer, and which I intend to keep.

I don't want a multi-function device, and I'm prepared to pay up to £500. What would you suggest I consider?

Thanks chaps. I had a chat with the lads at SRS, and I've ordered the Metz. I'm grateful for your views, but I concluded that I'm not likely to need the weather sealing on the flash, so the Metz made more (financial) sense!

Thanks for the help. According to the manual, the K30 is compatible, and I don't have any manual Pentax lenses (as yet anyway!), so that is now the "front runner"

I have a K30, with which I am very happy. I am now looking at buying a flash for it. With my previous system (Canon F1n and T90), I bought Canon flashes; I'm looking at the Pentax AF540 FGZ II, or the Metz 58 for my K30. Any recommendations/opinions?

Thanks in advance!

Thank you all for your help and opinions, I appreciate you all taking the time.

I'll certainly have a look at Lightroom - from what I can see, I'll need Windows 7 to use it? I'm currently on XP - although I have a copy of 7 on my desk waiting for me to find the time to install it - and the even greater time to reinstall and configure everything else!

Forgive me if this has been dealt with elsewhere, but I couldn't find it on search; what Raw processing software would people on here recommend?

I have the cut-down version of Silkypix that shipped with my K30, but on a recent I-day DSLR course run by my local authority, the lecturer (a Canon user) recommended Lightroom. He said that it gave much better results than the software shipped with his camera, so I was wondering what people on here would suggest?

Thanks.

Thanks chaps - I really appreciate all the input. According to the manual, the K30 supports both SDHC and SDXC, so I'll have a look at those. I take the point about 1 large card, but I am painfully aware of the eggs in 1 basket argument.

I propose to leave the setting on RAW+ (ie both Jpeg and Raw), and I believe that the 16gb card will take about 470 shots with that setting - quite enough at this time, even if I go a bit berserk! I'll be backing up on a regular basis, and on hol I'll take my iPad to backup to.( sorry for the poor grammar - been an intense day!)

I'm grateful for the advice. I have about 45 years of experience with film cameras, but this is my first digital slr so in many ways I'm starting from scratch. I bought an Olympus compact a few years ago to take to Norway on a skiing expedition and I was impressed with it's capabilities - which in truth I have still not properly explored! The only problem with it, is that Olympus opted for their proprietory Xd card, which is a bit of a nuisance. If it had SD, it would (for me) have been the perfect compact!

This may seem like a silly question, but I can't find the answer in the manual; can anyone tell me the maximum size of card that the K30 will take? It came with a 16gb, but I want to get a spare and I see from Amazon that they go up to 64Gb.

While I'm on the subject - are there any cards that I should avoid? I was proposing to get Sandisk.

Oh - the good old days, when you could get an entire program on 1 floppy disc!

my first pc (a 486) had 4 mb of memory, and 640 mb hard drive, and that was a pretty good spec!