The k-7 certainly does not sound like a gun going off! It's the same as the k-5 in virtually all but the sensor - which is the same one they used in the k20d, so not up to today's noise standards.

That's about right Charlotte. RAW files tend to look drab until you tweak them - you would have gone through a RAW conversion stage when you opened in CS4.

Don't cry! There's absolutely no need

Have you edited the RAW file at all? You tend to need to tweak things like the levels and white balance, think of the RAW file as a digital negative which needs developing. There are plenty of articles on the web about developing RAW files. It is probably best to acquaint yourself with the principles before shooting solely in RAW, and to begin with, shoot RAW+jpeg.

Can't be bothered with all that right now? You can develop your already taken RAW shots into jpeg in the camera, and revert to jpeg shooting for the time being.

Nice. The first one's great! But it's a pity a lot of them are a bit skewed... perhaps a bit of work with the crop tool to straighten things up a bit? the lighting is really nice on most of them, with the heron illuminated against a very dark background. A little levels work would give them a lift.

The square crops work great with the castus images. I love Cactus Cluster 1 and Cactus Flower - wonderfully captured silky petals.

OTOH decentred lenses are not that uncommon, Photozone.de has certainly tested a few decentred pentax zooms, and I've had a kit lens that was decentred (went straight back to Clifton Cameras) as well as a 16-45mm which was noticeably softer on one side - although that issue may have developed over time with the inevitable minor knock here and there. It definitely is worth thinking about if you are buying new IMO, and it's one thing that puts me off buying from overseas.

If you are concerned check out the company's returns policies, although you should be well covered if they are in the UK.

This is definitely true, I briefly owned a 21mm Ltd, and didn't really feel it was up to K or M build quality, although it was really nice for a modern lens.

Three grand, wow. I think my brother in law paid about 800 quid last year, mind you he was a friend he knows through ephotozine.

No. 2 has good contrast, the rest I find a bit murky although perhaps you were going for 'low key'

I would have a look at the levels histogram, and pull your sliders closer to the beginning and end of the histogram. Another trick is to use the levels 'eye-dropper' - click the white dropper on your brightest highlight, and it and all equivalent tones will become white. In a similar way, use the black 'eye-dropper' on something which should be black.

That's oversharpened - you can't really 'fix' an out of focus shot like that (although FocusMagic does a reasonable job)... Rose2 is nice though, and sharp in the right places!

Excellent. I'd love to explore in there! Would be a great horror movie set