the Cotswolds, and if you go let me know what you find because i live there and cannot "see it"

i was doing exactly the same thing yesterday with the same unit, took 367 shots using 1/32 power level with Duracell Ultrapower. would have used Lithium but Tesco out of stock. it had lithium in when i bought it and they lasted 18 months plus however long they had been in before i bought it.

i think you will find you can do everything you will want to in Elements and if you have the time ,for a relatively small cost, join a part time photography course at your local college as they will use elements and you will soon get to grips with it as you use it. that is the route i took. i tried Lightroom and found it far from intuitive compared to elements or photoshop also i prefer to organise my photo's my self so the catalogue features have no use for me, different perhaps if you have 1000's to sort.

probably not, the lad that was building them said he had to walk away quite often as the patterns were making his eyes go a bit wierd as they moved and changed when he moved.

with a K5 with AA filter , just imagine working with this all day.
guards to stop Lamprey getting into generators apparently.

"lennybloke" pointed me to a Pentax A f4 which i think will do the job. it is to fill a gap between 70 and 170, i have Sigma 170-500 if i need to go longer. i did look at the Tamron and Sigma 70-300 but the reviews were so mixed decided against it, these were both review/tests as well as actual user reports and 300 was not a must anyway. not sure 200 is, this will give me the chance to see and whether i go for a dearer lens in that range in the future. again thanks for all the comments/help

lens arrived ,well packed,excellent condition. Andrew a first class guy to deal with.

thanks for all the replies, the concensus seems to be that the older lens iq is better than 50-200. manual focus might not be too bad as CIF can be used if neccessary i suppose and at the price point is probably worth a go.

looking to find out which of the older 70-200 or 70-210 would be the best to buy or would the DA50-200 be better than all of them? will just be a stand in lens until i can afford something better but would still like some reasonable iq quality.

great set. 5&6 favourites for me, beautiful light.