what unholy combination of adaptors do you have to use to make a Canon adaptor work with the DA55-300 with AF?? I salute your ingenuity!

Pentax AF has always had a tendancy to "get there in the end" even operating well outside its specs, where Canon tends to be faster within spec but be artificially made to fail outside spec. At one point some Sigma lenses in Canon mount used to deliberately misreport their max aperture as f/5.6 to fool the AF into working, but I digress, back to Pentax before John has me shot!

I guess my point is if your max aperture is less than f/5.6 then AF is a bonus, not a given. I have seen it work down to f/11, but I cannot vouch for the results at that level.

when considering an autofocus TC, don't forget the light loss for AF.

I don't know about the current models, but the older Pentax DSLRs are rated to AF lenses which are f/5.6 and faster. It wont do a Canon on you and refuse to try with an f/8 lens, but the AF will be less and less reliable the slower your max aperture is from 5.6

if you take the indicators off does it class as a BMW?

My aproach has always been to not put it on the internet at printable quality, 800px on the long side isn't going to print well. But then most of my images aren't very good so.....

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop, Ubuntu/WindowsXP dual boot on my desktop.

I find RawTherapee very good for what I want, though admittedly I've never used Silkypix.

Good luck with your foray into the empire of the penguin, I switched before Vista came out and I've never looked back, I only keep WinXP on my desktop to keep my wife happy and play very occasional games.

Yesterday evening I had the urge to take all the old prime lenses I never use out into the garden and have some fun with flowers, insects and whatever else I found. Had a good time, didn't really get anything stunning but enjoyed myself.

As a side effect of this I turned out my two gadget bags which serve as general photographic storage and discovered three interesting facts:

1: I have two SFX bodies. Bonus camera!

2: One of my SFX bodies has a film in it which is on 21 out of 24 (this I had dim recollections of being the case)

3: My Auto110 also has a film in it, currently on 18 of 24

Both films have been in the cameras for years, I have no idea what's on the 110, the 35mm is almost certainly a theme park trip. Both films are well out of date, but also low speed so I have high hopes that developing them might produce some interesting memories if not any actual wall hangers.

Hence, I want to get them developed, but I don't want to spend too much doing it. Noting that my former favourite developers, dLab7, now only seem to do digital printing, who would you recommend for reasonably low cost but reliable film development?

My wife has a Canon digital compact with a 12x zoom. Its quite nice, for a compact, we bought it so that she would have the reach to get some good shots on our honeymoon in Kenya where 3x didn't seem likely to cut the mustard.

My wife is not really interested in Photography, but she has a reasonable eye. She is basically the ideal target market for that type of camera and she got some very good, well composed shots. If you look at them in isolation, you might be forgiven for thinking "what would I need an SLR for, when this compact fits in my pocket and has a 28-330mm equivalent lens"

If you then look at the shots of the same animals taken at the same time from the same land-rover with my K10D + DA 55-300, you would think again.

Even though the K10 is no spring chicken at this point and has only 10mp to the Canons 12 it easily captures more detail and gives the shots a general feel of quality and depth which the compact simply can't match.

My wifes compact is 2 years old at this point, but I sincerely doubt things have changed enough to alter the outcome, especially if you let the DSLR camp use a K5 II.

I hear Pentax may soon release a new kitchen, the cupboards are going to have a full timber frame.....

curse! foiled again!

Before the 55-300 came out the FA 80-320 was reckoned Pentax's best effort in this area, not sure what the current going rate for those is second hand but I quite like mine.

It isn't as good as the 55-300, being a little softer at the long end (at least mine is compared to my Dad's DA), but it is very usable, particularly stopped down to f/8, and may save you some pennies.

I seem to recall that John Riley used to get very good results from his FAJ 75-300 so that may also be worth a look.