I've had quite enough of this banning innocent passtimes for "the greater good". It doesn't work, and if it did it would be thoroughly debatable whether or not it's worth it.

They can have my cameras, when they prise them from my cold, dead fingers.

Thankfully no one looks likely to come for them any time soon. I hope for the sake of all concerned that they do not come in my lifetime.

carry more memory cards than you can possibly use, format without making a scene, then when the cops have gone change memory cards.

later, undelete your photos and continue as normal

flash memory has a limited lifetime in terms of number of write actions, so it never properly deletes anything as this would halve its useful life.

I don't think the Land of Hope and Glory is doing much better Arthur.

it's amazing what you can get away with in a yellow or "bouncy" jacket, as they are called in technical jargon.

I used to work for a survey company. On one occasion we had to survey an abandoned paper mill in Norwich. The gate was secured with a chain and two padlocks, which were supposed to be daisy chained to allow the holder of either key access. The other keyholder had managed to put the padlocks back wrongly and we couldn't get in, and neither could we get hold of him.

A quick consultation with the boss and a trip to a hardware store later, we donned our bouncy jackets and proceeded to hacksaw our way through the chain.

It was a substantial chain and took about 20 minutes of determined hacksawing, during which time more than 20 pedestrians and untold numbers of cars including 3 police cars passed us. We were not challenged.

get a proper macro lens second hand, you wont regret it

~£50 will buy you a very nice lens, at these distances autofocus wont really be any use to you and the glass in some of the old macros is superb. Look for a Kiron, Tamron SP, Vivitar Series 1 or obviously the Pentax offerings are great.

All Pentax lenses for 35mm and digital SLRs since the mid 1970s have used the K mount. The difference is that more recent ones (~1980s, often called A series or KA mount lenses) have electrical contacts and very recent ones (~1990s, the F and FA series, often called KAF mount) have autofocus and yet more electrics.

Since the DSLRs lack the necessary cam to detect the aperture ring position on M series and earlier lenses, they can only be used in one of two ways.

1. With the mode dial in M, set the shutter speed on the camera and the aperture on the lens. If you hit either the green button or exposure lock (deppending on your exact model of DSLR) the camera briefly stops down the lens and picks you a shutter speed. If you stop down the lens yourself using the DOF preview then you get a meter reading as normal.

2. With the mode dial anywhere but M, the camera operates in Aperture priority mode with the lens locked wide open. It doesn't matter where the aperture ring actually is, as the stop down actuator is not activated when the shutter is fired in this mode.

Note that the K10D has issues with its stop down metering system which are causing headaches all over the place. I don't know if this effects the K100D but I haven't heard it mentioned in relation to that camera. Certainly the stop down metering works perfectly on the *ist series and since the K100D seems to be quite closely related to the *istDS2/DL2 it is probably fine.

I use several M series lenses on my *istDL2 with great success. Less so on the K10D because of its exposure problems.

I think the lenses you have are probably not a killer reason to stick with Pentax if another system has something you really want. I think the Pentax system as a whole combined with the ability to mount those old lenses is a winning combination, but if I didn't think that I probably wouldn't be posting on this forum!

glad to see you and the K10D are starting to get along nice shots, keep em coming

they changed M series to A series, the A series and later ones are better than the M series (or so I have read).

Don, you don't want that piece of junk, it will just take up too much space in your kit bag. I'm coming over to Canada in a few weeks, since I'm feeling kind I'll give you your $50 back for it

seriously mate, snap it up!!!!!!

agreed, like thr DL and DL2 before it the K100D is a very capable camera at a very affordable price. Classic Pentax.

Pete, your monitor displays at something like 72ppi (pixels per inch)

The K10D produces files which are of the order 3800x2533 pixels (I know that isn't quite right, I don't have a photo to hand atm, but 72ppi for monitor resolution is also a pretty dodgy guestimate so it really doesn't matter)

So if you were to print your full frame photo from a K10D at 100% on paper, you'd end up with a print something like 52x35 inches.

thats pretty big, probably 2 normal posters side by side.

now get up really close to a "real" poster, and scrutinise the resolution. You'll see that it really isn't that great, because a picture this size is just not supposed to be viewed up close and personal.