kja

+1 for never printing at home. I just use a lab - even snapfish does a good job for far less than it would cost me on my own printer :p The Epson printers are meant to produce beautiful prints, but I don't know if it's just the higher end ones with the higher end papers. I have, way back in the day when i first got it, printed some stuff off on my Canon Pixma and I couldn't fault it. Other than the price of the ink and papers! I'd go for the hard drive, myself LOL

FWIW I've got the magical Tokina 11-16 2.8 and the equally magical Tokina 10-17 fisheye. Both are fantastic and I wouldn't hesitate about adding another Tokina to my lineup.

I'm guessing it will be really really good myself

Congrats on the new camera smisch!

Yes, it's a very good place to start. If/when you decide you want to try new things then you can check out more options, but master that 50 1.8 lens first - you're going to have heaps of fun!

Love the 1.8 - it kicks the 1.2's ASS for focusing. The 1.2 is a fabulous portrait lens but you really need your subject to be sittin' still ;) The Canon 85 1.8 is one of the best value Canon lenses ever - it's sharp, it has pretty pleasing bokeh for most people, it's freakin' fast to find focus (lots of people I know use it for indoor fast sports) and it just works. Cannot go wrong with it.

to see the kinds of things that people shoot with particular lenses, go to the lens archive on POTN - beware, many an hour and many a dollar have been lost after looking there. MOST importantly before you go trawling is deciding what YOU like to shoot and what is your current lens line-up not giving you. That will help you narrow the field down otherwise it's totally impossible and you'll just get another lens for the hell of it and you might hate it/not use it. One can shoot pretty much anything with any lens and the more you gain confidence and knowledge about your gear, the more you will try new things and push the boundaries of what you originally bought the lens for. Of course, some lenses are better for particular things, but never let yourself be limited to what people say you have to shoot!

Woohooo to those getting new cameras!! You're going to have super big fun!

Congrats! +1 on not buying any more lenses until you have a chance to use these and get a feel for your equipment and your needs. Remember, you're going to have a lot of crappy frames as you learn and that's a good thing. We often don't learn from good results, but the poor results help us move forward in leaps and bounds. Shoot til your fingers bleed. And if you don't have proper editing software, get some. Not only do you really need it because you do want to be shooting RAW imho (why on earth would you throw away data that you didn't need to toss and that you never know you might need later??) but it will simply be easier to quickly sort, tweak, resize for your output (web, print etc) and organize. My personal preference is Lightroom but there is a perfectly good editing program that will come with your Canon - DPP - and it does a very nice job with those tweaking things, I know lots of togs who prefer the way DPP handles some editing over any other program. RAW and manual are not scary and they are not hard. Not sure you are going to use RAW? Shoot RAW+jpeg - at least you have the images in their biggest, most detail rich form then. It's still my biggest regret when I switched to cameras with RAW - I was nervous about the "extra" processing and stuff. Turns out I screwed myself over - what I wouldn't give to have some of that extra goodness in a few frames that turned out to be important to me! And, most importantly, have fun!

Finally that 85 1.4 for Nikon users!

Noise = all the funky dots you see, especially in shadows. Some noise has colour - specks of red, orange, yellow, green etc. Some noise is easily removed with noise reduction software - LR3s new options are excellent now. Some noise can be really difficult and/or time consuming to remove. Some people don't care about noise at all, some are crazy anal about it. It's totally up to your own eye as to what is acceptable and it will likely vary from photo to photo. Googling for images with noise or some such should show you a zillion examples as will heading over to the pixel peeping at POTN. Flash = used well is wonderful. Pop up flash from your camera body is great if it's all you've got and must get the shot, but it's almost never going to look lovely I love using flash - but I always use it for a reason and have the end product in mind. I don't just fire it full tilt straight on and I can't tell you the last time I had to use pop up flash. Attached is flash fired from my baby Olympus 720SW camera - it's a little harsh, but without it the doglets would have been too dark and/or the sky would have been more blown instead of blue. HTH

Unfortunately, you've just discovered another reason to buy Canon and Nikon - their bodies hold at least some value over the long haul. I think you're going to have to just take the loss, sell it for whatever you can get and put the money towards your new lens...you might get enough to pay for the whole lens, though in a quick look the pentax market doesn't seem very active right now

Of those two, the Canon for sure.

A lot of it is personal choice but I'd personally stick with Canon or Nikon. Some of the other brands like Sony and Pentax etc do have some nice cameras, of course, but the big two have more lens choices, more support and better performance in areas that matter to many even if they don't realise it at first (high ISO shooting is one area, for instance). Nikon glass tends to be slightly more expensive overall. Canon has some glass options that Nikon doesn't have. Both companies have fantastic options for the vast majority of shooters and you can't go too wrong. The exception to this, imho, is make sure that you don't end up with Nikon system that requires a motor on the lens as this will drive the cost of the lens up and limit your options. Third party companies make mounts for both Canon and Nikon (and some others) which will also open your lens choices and budget up.

Wherever you can I have no idea - haven't bought one in years. here's the Border's link.

Understanding Exposure - every one should have this

Rottn - you'll have far more luck with full manual than Av or Tv, imho. And it's not that hard. Select your aperture, leave it alone. Now select your shutter speed - underexposed? Slow the shutter. overexposed - select a faster speed. You've just shot in full manual even though you are only changing ONE setting. Don't let the camera guess for you - YOU guess and see what happens. You will learn much more quickly how to control the various lighting conditions in the frame to suit your eye instead of hoping the camera can read your mind (and the scene). I promise, it's not as horrible as it sounds and you'll be very surprised how quickly you get an "ah-ha" moment & progress to being able to flip through to the right settings for your scene. As for needing to blur out the backgrounds, the only way to deal with the eyes and nose in focus at the same time and still lose the background is to back up away from your subject and move your subject away from the background. A wide open aperture (let's call it anything wider open than f4) just isn't going to give you the amount of centimeters you need if you're all up close. But if you have adequate distance, even f2.2 or f1.4 will give you a surprising amount of space to work with - of course, you have to have that distance which often isn't feasible (or desirable). If you're shooting the same subject over and over - measure the distance you want in focus and then use on of the Depth of Field calculators on the web to give you a starting point.

It's a nice way to get started, bb Eventually you *may* find that the lenses limit you but I still think the dual kit lenses are a very good way to get into things and start learning what you like and want from a system. If your budget will allow, add the Canon 50 1.8 - it's cheap as chips and an excellent introduction to low light, fast glass shooting.

It's probably a combination of both. The camera body will dictate what ISO you can use and be happy with - some people have a higher tolerance for noise than others and some camera bodies have more pleasing noise at high ISOs. The lens dictates how much light can get onto your sensor. A faster lens (1.4 is fast, 4.5 is slow) allows you to open the aperture and allow more light in a shorter time so they are more expensive and better for low light shooting. The trade-off - because everything in photography is a trade-off - is that you have a narrower depth of field: less of the image will be in the focus plane, sometimes only a few mm depending on your lens and distance to your subject. So this can make it tougher to get a sharp image, even if you get a good exposure.

It doesn't really matter so much about the brand of the lens, its limiting factor in low light is going to be its aperture value. You want something fast - 1.2, 1.4, 1.8. And even with those, in low light like in a house in the evening, you're going to most likely want some external flash happening, too. You may find that you're always going to be fighting against the Pentax and that it might be a good idea to consider selling it and moving to one of the bigger fish in the pond like Canon or Nikon before you invest in a lot more glass which will make it tougher for you to change, should you choose to do so. I have several Sigma lenses and I would not be without them. In particular, I adore my Sigma 30 1.4 - check to see if they make it in a Pentax mount. Even with 1.4 you're going to need extra light and a high ISO for those low-no light situations.

yay! New gear is always fun!!

Sydney's leading the charge on charging, looks like. FYI the link has a video in it and I couldn't get it to turn off so I could just read the article, but it was OK to listen to.

FL36 or FL50 over the FL20, I think. here's the amazon link to the 50 and the link for the 36

What's your question? And cute doglet!

Gorgeous and the red chair is perfect!