When you commit to a DSLR system you want to know that 1/ the company will be around in the foreseeable future and continue to develop the range, and 2/ provide good support. It's a two-way relationship. I just googled DSLR customer satisfaction and came up with a survey http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2012/07/04/pentax-dslrs-top-global-consumer-sa... which rated manufacturers out of a possible score of 1000 thus: Pentax 899; Nikon 891; Canon 888. Compare this with a 2007 survey by the same analysts: Nikon D series 820; Sony Alpha 793; Canon EOS 788; Pentax K 787; Olympus 783.

It is interesting that the three companies have all improved their ratings but Pentax has surged from 4th place to 1st by some margin, the main factors reported being: durability and reliability; variety of features; ease of operation; and shutter speed/lag time, according to those who responded to the survey, while Canon performed best in the picture quality factor. This is a great endorsement of the work that Ricoh have put into the brand and whilst the other brands have great promotion and the temptation is that the grass is greener elsewhere, I would always research thoroughly before switching brands.

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I am going to bring in the cheapest lens of all, the 50mm f1.8. I have got some of my best shots with this lens, especially really sharp close-ups with nice bokeh and available light interiors. Although not as handy as the 18-55mm kit lens it really outperforms.

If you want peace of mind you might just take the batteries out, which I think Pentax advise; I once dug out an old mobile phone to find that the battery had swelled up inside although that had been over a much longer period.

Downloading your images to a computer is no problem - either with the cable provided, or simply take the SD card out and plug it into the computer. If it doesn't have an SD slot then you can get an adapter which plugs into a USB socket. For basic editing try downloading Picasa from Google (it's free), or you may have an earlier version of Elements which comes with the Adobe package on your computer. It's the same with PDF or RAW.

Sorry it looked genuine to me, and sounded plausible. A bit put out by Algernon's brusque response; I have revisited the link I pasted in - nothing anti-Pentax there (are there really such sites?) and McAfee didn't flag up a warning. Was the deleted link to the same site? Anyway it's not worth dragging this out into a tedious discussion.

Here is the reason for delaying the launch of the full frame: http://thenewcamera.com/reason-behind-the-delay-of-pentax-fullframe-camera/
Apparently the recall of the K-3II interrupted the production line

Just to clarify, you don't need any software to operate to K50, it's all built-in. The software provided is Silkypics which is an image processing package. And you get a proper instruction book in a handy size!

If in a rush of blood to the head you decide to buy a white K-S2 then the 18-50 kit lens supplied with it will be coloured to match, otherwise all lenses are standard black. This standard combo will be a great lightweight option for travelling or on a family day out.

When you buy a K50 it comes with the software disc. However the RAW output is in DNG format which is industry standard and recognized by most photo editing packages including the free ones like Picasa as well as Elements, Photoshop etc. and of course JPEG is universal, so I never need to use the Pentax software. In the camera you can opt for RAW, JPEG, or both and also select the quality of the JPEG.