Thanks for all the suggestions. Now I'll go and exhaustively research them all! (I'm like that).

Scotland packs an awful lot into a relatively small space.

As mentioned a while ago in another thread I'm looking to get a lighter and more compact tripod that I can carry around fairly easily in the near future. At the moment I only have a great big Vanguard which is just too big and heavy to carry around unless I know for certain I'm going to need it. I don't know exactly how heavy it is but I'm guessing it can't be far off 4 kilos including the pan and tilt head.

Anyway, the Velbon Ultra REXi L is looking like an excellent option. What I'm not so sure about is a head to go with it.

Disappointingly, Velbon don't give much useful information about their ball heads on their site, but unless I'm mistaken they don't seem to offer any with a friction control unless the single twist lock control they have somehow doubles as one.

Could anybody recommend a decent ball head with a friction control that would work well with the Velbon legs? Preferably not too expensive i.e. not more than £60 and preferably even a bit cheaper if that isn't too much to ask. Thanks.

I always buy Integral cards, been using them for years for various purposes and devices. I have never had one fail on me, therefore never saw any reason to justify the higher price of Sandisk cards.

Now there's an idea!

Why stop at ISO 1, how about ISO 0.0000001?

Standard cropping technique for moving objects is to leave a bit more space in front of the object than behind. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to make the object look like it has space to 'move into'. No more than a 3:2 ratio of 'space in front' to 'space behind', frequently less.

Of course if you do this your shots will look like everybody else's, which may not be what you're after.

I never owned a K10D but I do know a bit about D/A conversion and digital data processing generally. Bottom line, the K-5 produces a 14-bit RAW file versus the K10D's 12-bit RAW file. The K-5 will therefore be capable of producing images with far more subtle tonal gradations than the K10D regardless of the number of bits used in the D/A conversion process. All those extra bits make little or no difference once you reduce them to 12 because you are throwing that data away. It's possible the extra bits might be used to aid the anti-aliasing process and effect some other subtle improvements to the final output when reducing them to 12 but I don't see a great deal of use for them beyond that.

At the end of the day an extra 2 bits you keep are of far greater value than an extra 10 bits you throw away, regardless of what you use you make of them before ditching them.

But then like is said the camera is on a tripod and if you use the 2second timer it will also shut down the SR automaticly.[/quote]But then I would probably forget to turn it off when not using the timer for the reasons stated above.

I assume it is a wireless remote? I use a (cheap, third party) wired remote, which as far as I know does not automatically turn of SR. The manual refers to it by the slightly old-fashioned term 'cable release' but has almost nothing to actually say about it so it's hard to be certain. In any case, it does the job.

Some of the tripod shots I like to do are 'light trails' at night in the city. A bit cliched I know but I personally find them enjoyable. For these type of shots the moment of starting the exposure can be time-critical depending on the effect I want, for example I might want to start an exposure just before a certain moving vehicle enters the frame, or exactly when it reaches a certain part of the frame. The timer isn't ideal for that hence my preference for the wired remote which starts the exposure instantly... and once I get into the habit of using a certain method I tend to stick with it so I find myself using the wired remote even when timing isn't important.