As Gwyn does actually say -

Good call Gwyn.

I voted for JudithAnn's lovely puffins

I liked Iqbal's gritty looking shot of the traffic light too.

From a speed/performance perspective, it has to be the K-7. Also has a lovely screen and hdr. The k20d offers great iq but isn't half as refined and I think you'd be disappointed with the continuous shooting frame rate. The K-x is also a faster camera than the k20d, don't dismiss it out of hand.

But I think you're already looking for confirmation that the K-7 is the way forward, right? Your wish list coincides with the K-7 feature set almost perfectly

Even if you are trying to record the scene accurately, tweaking is not necessarily cheating - it's a vital part of the process of recording the scene as you would actually see it.

Sometimes you take a picture of something, and when you get back, the colours and contrast are disappointing compared to how you remembered the scene. Your eye, or rather your brain, will perceive and differentiate colours and tones a lot better than the sensor on a camera.

That's quite a gift! Being given those would test my commitment to Pentax but as Stefan says i'd probably get the set of DA primes.

How is putting Eau de Toilette on it going to help, JudithAnn? ;P

What's the story with the root-cellars? Reminds me of Teletubby land, or Frodo Baggins' house in Lord of the Rings! (Very nice shot by the way.)

You're obviously right that the subject of the shot is of key importance... perhaps the image stirs different things in different people - or in your case, doesn't stir anything at all. For me the image is truly elegaic, contributed to by the empty landscape, the mist and the dead-end road... perhaps as a 'nonbeliever' it has an even greater poignancy - the image brings many of my rather mixed (though tending toward negative) feelings about religion to the surface. Yet there is that very human urge to build structures like this, and to be drawn to them.

As Corinthians says:

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me".

We all sometimes long for the simpler times of our childhood.

Lovely! I borrowed a p50 once and used it on holiday in Cornwall, very nice camera.

Never had that problem. I would ask them what evidence they have that you 'misused' it.

10-20mm received today... beautiful condition, and well packaged. Not a spec of dust on it - it's clearly been well looked after! Thanks Simon.