They really are tighter than the duck's proverbial aren't they?

I hope that with some rigorous training my Pentax-A 80-200mm can get up to the standard of your DA 60-250, Greg

Is there any way you could get it cheaper through some mildly fraudulent misuse of the student discount available - do you have a neice or grandchild at college at the moment?!

That may sound a bit norty but on the other hand a lot of people must download the software + crack illegally and pay nothing.

2010 was an anxious year employment wise, with my new employers keeping me on 3 month contracts while memories of redundancy in late 2009 were still fresh in my mind. And the new government coming along and ripping the guts out of the construction industry and the public sector, both of whom are key to the work I do as a landscape architect. But the contract keeps getting renewed which has given me confidence to grant myself luxuries like a holiday etc.

Three wedding of close friends and family. Spent some quality time with my family and young godson/cousin who was suffering with terminal cancer.

Sadly my godson did not make it to Xmas, although he was well enough to attend family parties and was looking forward to the festive season almost right up to the end. He had struggled for four years until his death, aged 17.

I hope 2011 will allow some more adventurous travel, more photography as part of my job, and will allow me to pick up some faster glass as i'm appreciating shallow dof more and more. I'd also like to take on a proper photographic project, two I have in mind are documenting the activities of my local community church (no I haven't come down with a dose of religion this year!) or photographing the full course of the Derbyshire Derwent.

There's also a Tamron 70-300mm lens which seems to be almost on a par with the Pentax 55-300mm lens, but only costs about 65.00 second hand, roughly what your 50-200 could fetch. It's also a better one for close ups of large insects etc as it focuses closer than the Pentax. The downside is that it suffers from more 'purple fringing' on high contrast edges, but you can reduce that in software.

Its very disorientating when you are used to Photoshop, but with a bit of perserverance you come to realise it's actually set up very helpfully and makes you feel you are really in command of your images. In the 'Develop' stage all the tools are right to hand in the side panel, which is actually easier than in PSE where they are accessed via various drop down menus.

I think it's pretty good value as even if you couple it with PSE for layer work it's miles cheaper than full photoshop. )

According to the OP 7x5 at 300ppi was a minimum size. Therefore it would not be necessary to resize since the images are already larger than this. You could change the resolution to 300ppi without resampling the image (without resizing) if you wished but it's not clear that that is necessary.

There's a significant difference between requesting 7x5 images, and min. 7x5 images.

Good shot! A little fill light *applied conservatively* in LR3 works wonders. Sometimes I think that the DR deficiencies of the k-7 are over stated! Again, if you are using RAW the highlight correction modes are redundant.

Happy Winterval!

May Santa's sack be bulging with Pentax goodies, and other treats!