Every time we give up something of our way of life because of something they have done, they win.

Father Ted, that is one of my all time favourite quotes.

simply and only and entirely because they will provide no benefit for the people who will have to pay for them.

All of those can be done with a photocard driving license, which we already have. Anyone who finds they need one and still has a paper license can easily have their paper license replaced with a photocard one if they want to.

This is my problem, no one has yet been able to tell me what they are good for, but the government is adamant that we need them. I can't think of an explanation for that other than the government don't want me to know why they want ID cards. I can't think of a reason they wouldn't want the public to know, unless they know or strongly suspect the public wont like what they plan to do.

All we get is hand wavey explanations about terrorism and identity theft and not one of them holds water.

Perhaps I can explain

You keep fixating on how ID cards can't do us any harm, and perhaps you are right, perhaps we are all paranoid, but the simple fact is that we don't need them. You and the other Europeans have even managed to show that they are unnecessary for many of the nefarious possibilities which have been put forward for them.

They are going to be introduced at vast expense which WE will have to pay for and it will be a total and complete waste of time and money.

If the best anyone can come up with in support of an idea is that it will do no harm, but will cost billions of pounds this country doesn't have, I'm sorry but it takes more than that to convince me.

You have ID cards already, so tell us, what is good about them?

the problem is the voltage across the firing terminals of some old flashes is several hundred volts. Pentax bodies are apparently more resilient in this regard than some, but reports vary as to maximum safe voltage between a few volts and several hundred.

Use a volt meter to check the trigger voltage on your flash. To do this, power up the flash with fresh batteries and connect a volt meter between the big pin in the centre of the flash shoe and the contact on the side of the shoe. Let us know what you read.

if you're comfortable with the command line, dcraw is fantastic for extracting jpegs from RAW.

put the executable somewhere in your path statement, then go to the directory containing the .PEFs and type

dcraw -e *.PEF

and as if by magic all the JPGs will apear.

Maybe its because I started using PCs before Windows was available, but I never understand why people consider clicking and dragging all over the place to be easier than a nice little wildcard on the command line.

since you're not getting anything for the pictures anyway, I don't see what you loose if they copy them?

What I would do:

explain to them that you have already spent a lot of time and effort on your wedding present to them, and you can't afford the time to bring the others up to full print standard. Offer them the images as they currently exist.

When I did my Uncles wedding as a wedding gift, I spent a great deal of time on the 40 or so shots which went in the album. I then did cursory batch processing on the remaining shots which went on a CD for the happy couple and they were deleriously happy. The looks on their faces when they saw the pictures were more than enough payment, and TBH they can wallpaper their house with prints of them and nothing would make me happier.

It's interesting that as recently as the mid 80s the very concept of ID cards in the UK was the stuff of comedy programs. No real UK party would have contemplated the move because they'd have been out of office via the nearest window, without anyone taking the time to open it first.

no chance, I need the tin foil for my hat!!