Calibrating a bad panel which has largely different brightness and colour temp in different places across the screen, probably 6-bit LUT which in this case just creates banding and is far, far away from the mythical 16M colours (surely far from being able to cover even not a very wide RGB gamut)... Yes calibration is very important, but I would say - even more important if you have a decent device to calibrate .

No problem, you can google a lot of info, just on of the first hits and a brief about main panel types:
http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/lcd-panel-types.php

Other thing is that asking shopkeepers such a a things usually just makes them confused .

PS. Still worth to mention that when it comes to LCD for colour work, Eizo and NEC are usually far better than all others (despite the fact that i.e. some good Eizo monitors are using Samsung made panels), but they use well assorted ones, to meet very tight margins, they are quite linear across whole screen (brightness, contrast, colour temperature), some other associated electronics is better, LUT tables are bigger, some have 12-bit LUT) is better, software/firmware usually good as well, etc. I think Eizo are also pre-calibrated in factory. And finally these are of course quite expensive in comparison to the others .

I would say, you still can get not bad results from a good TN panel based LCD, but it all depends what you really need, how critical is it, how much you can see and sacrifice .

That is one of the reasons why one should not use TN panels for photo/colour work, these have wide angle as well, but just a few degrees shift vertically and a bit more horizontally and you see a massive change in colours, hue, ... This samsung has PVA panel (not a TN one).

First and very important (I did write some more nfo in some other topic, here, don't remember where though) when buying LCD for photo/colour work, don't even think of buying LCD with TN pannel - these are the worse choice for colour/photo work (and most of cheapest LCDs are using these pannels and probably most of us are using LCD with these pannels ).
IPS, MVA type pannels are much better in this case, if you have money to spend number one choice is Eizo and/or NEC then comes the rest, not sure in you can find f these in Colombo, if you can't, when choosing from what is available still try to avoid LCDs with TN pannels and find LCD that has a 8-bit (or more) LUT table (not usual 6 bit for cheaper and TN pannels).

Bear in mind that there is one more important factor (two really - focal length as well) when estimating how wide DOF will be - distance from the subject, based on the first example, with 45cm from the object even changing to f/22 will not help much using 105mm lens (means DOF still will be too shallow to have whole flower in focus).
You may check it by using some DOF calculators available around, some example one here:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

I was testing by myself many times whether SR makes troubles when panning, but was able to get good results with SR on and off, so simple conclusion would be that it probably doesn't matter, however, many times I was surprised by the level of blurr when I was panning with SR on and what is more important when taking pictures at shorter shutter speeds, but when doing them with a panning technique - so, lens following moving object. I've done quite a lot of panining and sometimes I feel when it was good and when not (before checking on the screen) and I tend to think that SR may give inconsistent results. I would agree with what was put in here earlier, that smooth camera movement may help SR work properly during panning, rapidly-shaky hands during panning may cause SR reactions blurr photo.
Some panning examples with SR on:
http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image50909.html

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image51102.html

If that would be unlit caves only, that would be good, unfortunatelly even at the last example in this subject you can see what happens in darks... But that's only one thing, decreased dynamic range (on the dark side) is the other, actually having said that, on examples above it looks quite good for some reasons (in comparison), I guess all these examples has been taken with a bit different light (shadows show that) and that's why.

Obviously low light is the way to test ISO performace, just because lower signal-noise ratio when capturing low light scene. K20D is known for a very poor handling of noise in dark areas, what seems to be the reason for a its decreased dynamics range (not on the bright side, but on dark).

Hi Paul, IMHO if the face of the chap on the left would be in the picture it would make much more impact (together with the guy walking away).

Excellent one Martin, great shape when you have a liquid with different density (than water).
I have to try this fun...