Brian,
Firstly: ND grads. I had info from a serious pro who says that Cokin X&Z-Pro filters are fine for blue skies, but the Lee ones struggle a bit. The Lee filters are better at producing moody looking images

The reds: I reckon you're processing or shooting in the sRGB colour space sRGB is like a straight jacket for images. From your images it looks like you are clipping in the red channel (hence the "bleurgh" reds). Here are some suggestions... (please note: I'm talking here about colour spaces, not bit depth!!)

1) If you're shooting JPG, then switch to the AdobeRGB colour space. The AdobeRGB has more colour room in the greens, and consequently it doesn't have to "squish" the colour information up as much at the expense of the reds (which is what happens in sRGB).

2) If you shoot RAW then you have two options for colourspace.
a) AdobeRGB - this is a good colourspace for general work.
b) ProPhoto - unbelievably wide colourspace that spans most of the visible range of colours. However, because of that you must output to 16-bit TIFF when you use this, otherwise you get serious posterisation in flat colour areas (like sky). ProPhoto+16-bit is great for doing critical work, or work that requires a fair bit of messing around in Photoshop - you'll get smoother colour areas and less posterisation.

Whatever colourspace you use (and I generally use AdobeRGB), you'll need to be aware of the following points (and here I'm assuming you plump for AdobeRGB):

i) You should set Photoshop to handle colour management - get it to prompt you when loading anything that isn't AdobeRGB.

ii) Before you save for web you must convert to the sRGB colour space. Converting colourspaces always involves some compromises, so you may have to play around - try Perceptual, or Relative as the intent (and have black point compression checked). Incidentally, that's what the Soft Proof option is in CS/CS2 - it allows you to work out how the colours will be transformed, and highlight any gamut clipping before you actually convert.

iii) For printing you must also convert colour spaces. Processing labs often work in near-sRGB (like Photobox). Some of the pro labs (like ProAMimaging) require you to map into their designated colour space. For inkjet printing, most modern Epson printers have an "AdobeRGB" mode tucked away in the driver (Colour Controls / Gamma 2.2 / Colour Mode = AdobeRGB) - this is great when you already work in AdobeRGB as you have pretty much equal colour space.
There's a side issue with Epson printers - the factory shipped profile that's installed on the machine is a composite one. It's one file that contains the profiles for each of Epson's paper types. Unfortunately there's no way to access the individual profiles from anything except the driver, so unless you have your own printer profiler it's best to let the driver deal with colour management, and not Photoshop.

iv) The monitor you use will often be like-sRGB, so there can be some colour "squishing". Depending on the gamut of the monitor, when you profile it (with a Spyder etc), the profile will compress the colours to "make room" for the outer edge colours - so they don't get clipped on the monitor. (Incidentally, that's why pro LCD monitors are seriously expensive - they have extraordinary colour gamuts, capable of rendering a much wider range of colours than your average LCD or even CRT).

Hopefully that should set you on course... I could blab all day about colour management (and even then I mess it up a good proportion of the time!!).

Matt

Hee hee. Fun fun fun!
The only trouble with the 12-24 was that I just had to upgrade most of my filters Went for the Lee Foundation with a 77mm wide angle adapter, and Cokin Z-Pro ND grads. Wow! What a great piece of gear. Absolutely no vignetting, even with all 3 filter holders in place
Now all I've got to do is get out more
Matt

LOL! I said it was stonking, didn't I
Have fun with your new toy!!
Matt

Nikolaos,
In answer to your questions:
I reckon it's better to avoid camera shake and use a higher ISO setting. (The *ist-D series of DSLRs have this feature - which can be disabled). I don't know about the S60, but I'm sure you can turn it off (or use "P", rather than the fully automatic "no brainer" mode).
If you do perform post-processing, then there are plenty of noise reduction plugins available. Personally I use NeatImage (www.neatimage.com), but there are some excellent freebie ones too - such as "Noiseware Community Edition" - http://www.imagenomic.com/

As with all digital imaging, you have to try it out! Usually the compacts have quite aggressive sharpening included, but you can always add more in Photoshop Elements etc.

One thing thing I'd say is that compact digicams have a much smaller sensor than the DSLRs and so suffer more from noise issues. But then, you may be pleasantly surprised at what you can achieve - especially having the convenience of immediate review

Have fun!
Matt

Saso - no there's no delay. It behaves exactly like the button on the body (including the ability to disable focus on half-press in the custom menu).

Thread worth checking:
https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1664&highlight=cs205

and the DIY version:
https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=266&highlight=cs205

Hope that helps
Matt

AFAIK the RAW file format is the same (for the current *ist-D series at least)
It's the header that is different. The textual name of the camera appears in the header and allows the RAW convertor to deal with different models. In the case of Pentax all the software has to do is be made aware of the the "new" model names (and not a new format).
HTH!
Matt

If Aperture can handle Adobe DNG, then you can use the stand alone DNG convertor to take PEFs and turn 'em into DNGs

Matt

Ditto Arthur's comment.
16-45 is stonking.
12-24 is superb
And the 50-200 has pretty excellent reviews too.
Matt

The date, time, exposure information etc are all stored inside the JPG file, in what is known as the "EXIF data".

Most cameras don't have the intrinsic ability to add a date stamp (mostly because it is such a pain to remove from the photos afterwards). However, there are free software packages that will add the EXIF date and time to the image for printing.

Perhaps someone else can comment on which software does this easily? (Otherwise I'll dig around Google and see)

Google turned this up for starters: http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm

Matt

Error codes are listed here:
https://www.pentaxuser.com/faq/pentaxerrorcodes.html

(A90 doesn't look good - an electronic fault)
Matt