Mega pixels aren't the whole story...

Forget compact digicams. They don't compare. The sensor for compacts is miniscule, and consequently the pixel zone is minute. Noise becomes a serious problem. For example, the *ist-D at 1600ISO has less noise than some compacts at 400ISO.

As regards the agencies - it doesn't matter. Just upsize the image from the camera. The *ist-D at 6mega pixels will give you fine art quality at 18x12", given the right workflow. By that I mean - work in RAW, convert well (Capture One being my personal favourite). Capture One Pro, and Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS/CS2 will upsize to 4x, and the resolution is absolutely stunning.

Of course, you have to have half way decent lenses

In fact, since going RAW and improving my workflow I've had to upgrade all my lenses (that I used happily with the MZ5 & Z1 film cameras) because I have become much more critical

Yes, more mega pixels would help.
Pentax are producing a medium format digital camera which should be superb, and who knows? Maybe they are developing a higher resolution DSLR too?

It's true, Pentax are a little way behind the other brand names, but you certainly get a full featured product (things like true spot-metering for example are often not available on other entry level products). And the compatibility with older lenses is second to none

Matt

It sounds like it has been discharging completely. Four to six seconds is about as long as it takes to charge from a full discharge.
The discharge required is a combination of ambient light vs distance. Being outdoors helps, but don't forget the inverse-square law : that is, that if a subject is twice as far away it requires four times as much light.

The other thing is the P-TTL mode. It requires twice as much power - one flash for the preflash, and the same for the main flash. Combining this with the inverse square law you end up with some serious drain!

Maybe you were just stretching it too far?

If you are in a fairly controlled setup, you can switch to manual on the camera, then change the mode to M or A on the AF360. This will give you twice as much power because there's no preflash.

Obviously I can't give a complete answer (as I don't know the exact circumstances), but hopefully that's given some food for thought!
Matt

You'll always get sticky dust... the CCD is charged so in the end the dust will stick by static.
Cleaning isn't that difficult though. The bulb blower gets most of the stuff away though
Matt

XP should recognise the card reader (and the camera too) without a driver disk. If you used the CD supplied with the reader this may have confused XP...
Matt

Glad to help
Matt

WiziWYG is available for the Mac as well

Mike,
Just download WiziWYG from www.praxisoft.com
It's free, and does a great job of calibrating laptop monitors. Just go through the process, select D65 (6500K) and gamma 2.2 (PC standard), and when asked for the monitor type, select "Generic LCD" - this should get you a pretty excellent colour match.
In fact, I have a laptop that, for some bizarre reason, a Pantone Spyder doesn't do a good job on, and WiziWYG works a treat
Matt

Some say that, but not all:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=12704651

Personally, it's not going to make any difference at all. It'll be the only super wide zoom for Pentax that can take filters.

I'm just waiting to get my hands on one...
Matt

You're absolutely right Kim

Kimbo, if you're printing to anything up to 18x12" then www.proamimaging.com are superb. I've had some 16x12" prints done and they are absolutely stunning (even if I say so myself ) and extremely cost effective Small snag is you have to prepare everything - colour space, image size etc and post on CD. Benefits are: super fast turnaround (I posted on a Friday, received on a Tuesday with 1st class post), and 100% accurate results.
I'd definitely recommend them
I've also used Photobox, but have just got back better results by using a Fuji Frontier profile, rather than just sRGB (their equipment is nearly sRGB, but not quite).

Going off thread a bit...

Matt