Thats plausible, my work machine (which is the one on which Opera occasionally crashes with this site) is running a slightly out-of-date version of both Opera and Flash because I no longer have admin privelidges and can't be bothered to get IT to come round and update it for me.

hey thats actually not bad, not up to what I used to get from my "proper" KM film scanner, but ~1/10th of the price!

this site occasionally crashes Opera for me, no problems with FF or IE7 under WinXP or Ubuntu Linux (obviously not IE under Linux).

I like Opera best, but generally end up back with FireFox every so often because Opera is more finiky about what sites it will work with.

If only everyone would just stick to the W3C standards we wouldn't have this problem!

That is a very good way to learn photography, but it is far from the only way. Some people learn best from books, others learn best by doing or by watching.

All an experienced photographer needs is M and Av (or Tv, I've never seen the benefit of both). Someone learning photography will aspire to the stage where they need only those modes, but a DSLR isn't just about becoming a great photographer, it's about taking photographs.

If you give someone who has only used a P&S a K20D they will be disapointed with their results until they master Av mode. The K20D's "idiot mode" is not intended to be used frequently by the owner of the camera, it's there so you can give the camera to a non-photographer and say "take my picture would you?". It is not a useful learning tool.

The AP mode on the base level cameras makes a semi-intelegent decision about what you're doing based on light levels, zoom setting, focus setting etc. It picks a program line which is suitable for the subject at hand and gets it right about 90% of the time. This is useful to the beginner for two reasons

1. you get better pictures in automatic this way
2. you can watch what it's doing as a first step towards letting go of the automatics and doing it yourself.

The keen student will want to progress beyond using the automatics, but like a keen child learning to swim that doesn't mean they should be denied arm-bands in the beginning.

one thing some people need to learn about me is my tongue rarely leaves my cheek for any great length of time.

For my part I manage to agree with both of you, the K10D, like most pro and semi-pro models, is fundamentally a more basic camera than the K-X.

I also think the K-X is the right choice for a beginner. It has, on paper at least, enough performance to allow a new photographer room for growth while having enough automatic features to hold their hand while they do so.

I started out with an MZ-7, and learned a great deal by watching what it was up to while it was set to Auto-Picture mode.

Pentax's AP mode is something most of us don't use, but it's actually a very impressive piece of programming. For a long time I used to take multiple shots of things I wanted to come out well, one on AP mode and one or more on settings I thought best. It was a long time before the settings I chose became consistently as good or better than AP mode.

I'm not saying rely on it all the time, or blindly follow it like a delivery driver with sat-nav, but it is a tool like any other and it has its uses.

you've got your designations backwards there.

I'm not sure if either of those older lenses is noticably better than the Tamron or Sigma APO in terms of sharpness. I would expect the FA 80-320 to be the best of the two Pentax's and being second hand it should be a fairly cheap option.

I presume your budget wont stretch to the newer DA 55-300, which is superior to all the above lenses in almost every respect.

I used to get about 4000 pixels along the long side out of my film scanner, thats enough for 20x16 at least, just how big are you planning to print?

I haven't heard much discussion on this forum about interpolating up for large prints, but on other forums I have been involved with people swore by Genuine Fractals.

the K10D is very friendly, what are you implying?

(speaks to camera bag) There there, don't listen to them!!

as I recently said on another forum, Canikon users can keep there fast AF, and I'll keep my weather sealing and body mounted anti-shake.

I know several Canikon users who look on in envy at the DA Ltd's. Hell so do I!

ignore him, perhaps he'll go away