As Iceblinker has pointed out, most Ebay sellers are decent people and take advantage of their low overheads to keep prices low.

There are a few who spoil the fun for everyone though, and personally I don't buy anything from Ebay if it can be easily faked and I care about the brand.

I would be more inclined to go for somwhere like 7dayshop.com, or picstop. They are reputable sellers with extremely competitive prices often matching or beating those on ebay and you can be absolutly sure you'll get what you buy that way.

The main reason to be careful with ND filters is to make sure you don't get a noticable colour cast. Good ones are very close to true neutral density, bad ones may be noticably coloured.

I have a Hama 4x ND from 7dayshop and if it has a colour cast then the K10Ds auto white ballance knocks it on the head.

all "rules" in photography can sometimes be broken to great effect. This is one of those instances. I love all 3.

ahh rocket blower, I knew there was a 3rd one!

with one or two exceptions, camera shops are expensive for accessories.

When you go to buy, make sure you know what you're going to want and what you can get it for, so that if you are offered a deal you know if it's a good one.

I presume you're just starting out in photography? if so you're going to have a lot to learn and I would keep the kit simple to start with. This way you can add to it as you figure out what interests you. No sense spending money on things you end up not using.

Here are some things you will want, whatever you are into.

1. a spare battery. I use off brand ones from 7dayshop.com and have had no problems with them at all. Some people like to stick to the Pentax branded ones, which are more expensive. You pays your money and takes your choice.

2. At least 2 memory cards, at least 2GB each. Also make them fast ones like Sandisk Extreme series cards. I have a couple of fast cards and a couple of slow ones and the slow ones really annoy me.

do they have to be in current production?

Assuming current lenses only and ignoring price:

Pentax DA 12-24
Pentax DA* 16-50
Pentax DA* 50-135
Pentax DFA 100mm Macro
Pentax DA* 300mm


I would still have some serious thinking to do for Sigma 10-20 vs Pentax 12-24. I've seen what the 12-24 can do and it's amazing, but the extra 2mm wide angle on the Sigma would be tempting.

As Ikillrocknroll said, it deppends on what you are shooting. The above would cover everything I do with serious glass, although I'd want a nice pair of high quality teleconverters too (1.4x and 2x with SDM pass through and SR compatibility please Pentax!). Of course it would set you back on the order of £2.5K and still not be right for everyone.

looks like you got it about right to me, I love the razor sharp body with just a little motion blur in the wings.

lol you actually do have nearly twice my horsepower.

Thats quite likely she's not exactly a sports car

sit an underpowered car at idling revs and turn on all the electronics, then tell me doing so doesn't make the alternator harder to turn. It's probably harder to find a car with a sub 2L engine in your part of the world but putting the headlights on knocks about 50RPM off the idle speed in my 1.4L Skoda.


Simple conservation of energy, if you want more power out one end, you have to put it in the other end.

Anyway, I'm not really looking for an argument here. It's a pretty cool invention and no doubt about it handy as a mobile power source, and any environmental impact from inefficiency of power generation is probably canceled out by the items not being randomly plugged into the grid for no reason.

I'm not convinced Don, I think you'll find if you draw more juice off an alternator it becomes harder to turn.

The car will burn more fuel while charging your doofer and going via a battery and an invertor isn't really very efficient either.

It's a neat portable power source and it does cut down on applances plugged into the grid not doing anything, but Georges suggestion is greener because power stations are about 8 times more efficient at generating electricity than a car engine + alternator.