At a mere £59.99 it makes you wonder what glue Pentax is sniffing though! Is it made of some sort of rare and exotic metal?

These are quite handy for the DA35mm too - http://www.ebay.co.uk/Lens-Hood-Pentax-smc-DA-35mm

If you know what Av mode and iso means, the rest is pretty much non essential and can be deferred until you actually need to know... At that point, time to dust off the manual! Yes the manual looks daunting but... It does have a contents page and an index

Things like the shake reduction thing... Trust your instinct that it should be left on! You don't need it on a tripod but you won't ruin too many shots if you accidentally leave it on... And if you use the tripod and self timer it'll automatically turn itself off...

The 50mm has a good reputation. Not sure about the rest. Just try em and see! Don't listen to people who say old lenses are rubbish on digital. There are good lenses and there are... not so good.

Every time you've carefully tweaked an image, save a 'Preset' of the settings - click the + symbol next to where it says 'Presets'. Saves you a job on the next similar image! (edit just noticed I am repeating Paul... sorry)

The presets will have a much more drastic effect on jpeg images...

Other than that I just wing it, and would be as grateful for tips as you!

I wonder if it's possible for users to share their own custom presets? It would be particularly useful for lens correction presets where no 'official' lens correction profile is yet available.

Wow you totally changed it! I like what you did with the background, but perhaps it was a bit strong for the petals.

Try working on the blue background first - go to hue/saturation, select 'blue' and pull down the brightness slider.

You can also use the magic wand selection tool to select the blue background and darken it.

Do the above on a new (duplicate) layer and when the background is dark enough, you can erase parts of the flower which have become too dark using the eraser brush tool (use a soft edge to the brush and a fairly big brush diameter). As you erase, the original image underneath will come through.

Lol either Lainey is a married man with a woman's name, is a lesbian with a civil partner, or you have dropped a clanger, Bill! My money's on the latter

The second version looks OK, but is the rose a two-toned flower? The inside of the petals looks red, and the outside yellow... the transition between the two colours looks a bit posterised... especially in the second version. Maybe raise the lightness without raising the saturation (somehow)!

Glad to hear I'm not the only one! Arriving at my destination to get the 'No memory card inserted' message is another classic!

Interesting. Seeing the moon on a white background makes you look at it with fresh eyes.