As far as I am aware the most accurate and feature rich calibration tools seems to be made by X-Rite (A.K.A. GretagMacbeth).

They are expensive but seem to be the gold standard against which other devices are compared.

You should be doing as little adjustment as possible with the calibration software as this only alters the graphics card output. Get the monitor contrast and brightness right on the monitor and the overall output should be better. I have the Spyder 3 Elite and it gets you to manually adjust Brightness, Contrast and RGB values for the monitor before doing the graphics card LUT calibration.

Graphics cards are only used by 3d applications and the very expensive Photoshop CS5. No other image editing requires any type of graphic card other than the bog standard ones with a monitor in interface. They card would be a waste of money unless you do CAD or PC gaming.

An i3 would be powerful enough for photo work. The biggest thing is getting a good Solid State Drive (SSD) for Windows and your main editing programs. This brings boot times down below 30 seconds and load times to 1-3s depending on the program.

A RAID0 array for photos you are working on. This puts 2 disks together as one and one takes odd bits the other takes the even bits and theoretically doubles read/write speeds in real terms you are looking at 70-95% speed boost depending on workload. I would also suggest a RAID1 array for backups. This essentially has two identical disks which get written to simultaneously. If one fails you just replace it and the array will automatically refill it and keep the images backed up.

So all in all any decent quad core processor with 8GB of RAM will do fine. I'd also invest in an eIPS monitor from LG for colour accuracy.

1 SSD for Boot, Windows, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc.
2x Smaller high performance HDD for RAID 0 for working files, documents, cache, etc.
2x Large low power HDD for RAID 1 backups

My setup is now 2 years old but very fast for K-5 files:

Phenom II X4 3.2GHz
4GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
1x 64GB SSD
2x 100GB 7200rpm in RAID0
2x 100GB 7200rpm in RAID1
1x 320GB external backup drive

Focal length is focal length no matter the format. You will notice compact cameras do state actual focal length on them as well. A 200mm is a 200mm because the light path is 200mm. Equivalent focal length is really made up nonsense that causes confusion, equivalent field of view would be more accurate.

The Gadgetinfinity cactus v5 triggers work very well with Pentax. I have 4 and love them.

Hi, just posting to say I have finally had a chance to collect the parcel. Lens arrived in perfect condition and was well packaged.

Quick test to see how it performed as it is part of a gift for my father, it will be paired with a K-r. He doesn't know about either yet.

Lastly, this lens has made my wife and I want to get two more. Small light, sharp, good rendering and bokeh. Was not sure f2.4 would be fast enough but am very pleased with it.

Thanks Chris, really good first experience using the classified section

Grrr... Still want a faster 35mm prime. The FA31 is just too expensive. Then again, it is beautiful.

Is that house in Totness? Looks awfully familiar.

I don't know what to think about this camera. It is the fugliest of the fuglies in yellow but doesn't look so bad in silver or black. I am not fond of the two tone colouration, would prefer all black.

This is the problem with hiring a 'designer', there is no real sense of ergonomics and thought of control positioning. The e-dial looks cheap and nasty as do the other dials, buttons and switches.

But, this could be amazing for photos and video.

Keep the specifications, fire Marc Newson and get a camera designer to thin it out a little and give it a more elegant form.

The K-r and K-5 are things of beauty as were their predecessors. This thing is just weird.

No complaints about the concept though, k-mount mirrorless is good.

Other thing that could have been improved. Have a VERY empty 'mirror box' and have internal lenses with a long flange especially for the mirrorless sytem. Canon did something similar with their APS-C lenses and their smaller SLRS can still take 'normal' lenses.

They should have gotten someone from Apple to look at it. Can you imagine, all aluminium (exterior finish too) APS-C K-mount mirrorless to match the FA Limiteds as well as some silver DA XSs?

I still want a DA* 28 to 36 F1.4 Then again I could save for a 31 f1.8 but it is somewhat expensive and I am rather fond of SDM/DC

Plus a DA* 11-16 F2.8