That sounds like one of those mythical 'secondhand shop wonder deals' which eBay was supposed to have killed off for good. How come I never find any of these in the studenty (hence lots of charity shops) part of Glasgow?

If you decide to get a flashgun in the future, the Metz 48 is significantly more powerful than the Pentax 360 (GN 48 vs GN 36) and also significantly cheaper (£150 vs £250-300)

The official Pentax one is the best, but its post-hike price is £65.99 (!)

Primes are great for 'set piece' photography - macro, portraits, landscapes. They are, however, less useful for situations in which the subject moves relative to the photographer. Sports, birds, situations where there's no time to change lens (e.g. on a safari or other 'group holiday): in all of these, the zoom produces an image of much higher quality than the one the prime couldn't take.

50mm was classic but wrong The actual 'normal' focal length on a 35mm format (whether digital or film) is 43mm - the reason Pentax made the seemingly odd FA43!

Sigma's new OS is supposed to be quite good, but it makes the lens more expensive and heavier (the latter is a big deal, since size/weight is already the reason these lenses often get left at home).

[quote:3496ace15f="Anvh"If you like flash controll you need to look at Nikon those have the creative lighting system and you can controll the off shoe flash wirelessly from out the camera.[/quote]Which if you read the (almost comically hate-filled ) Pro Digital section of the DPR forums, has the disadvantage of being triggered by any Nikon DSLR within about thirty feet. So good for groups provided that nobody else photographing the same group also has a Nikon DSLR.

Old Vivitar flashes are one of the categories with a reputation for trigger voltages high enough to fry a K20D, let alone a radio trigger. I'd be very, very wary of using any of them on-camera.

If you want an autofocus macro lens (1:3 'macro' zooms aren't that great - the Pentax kit lens will do about 1:3 at the long end), then the best option is one of the 100mm-ish macro primes.

The Tamron 90mm, Pentax D-FA 100mm, and Sigma 105mm are all fabulous lenses: I have the Pentax (well, the Samsung version which is optically identical) because of quick shift and because I got it at a good price.

In fact, buying whichever of those three you can find at the best price is not a bad plan at all.

He describes the Canon 5D as out of his budget, and then buys a K7, an FA31, and an FA77

Unless your 12-24 is a Sigma, it will not work on a full-frame camera.

The problem with this argument is that Pentax don't make anything longer than 300mm (and don't make a fast zoom longer than 135mm), so buying a long zoom involves buying the (normally full-frame, therefore heavy) Sigma/Tamron versions.