Have MZ7 but want to go digital. Want a camera that has some idiot proof stuff but will also allow me to progress with manual settings. Is this it?

There seem to be so many around and I'm totally confused. Not sure if I should go with this (feel like I am leaning towards another Pentax).

Travelling to South America and will need a camera that can give me good results in landscape/glacier/wildlife shots so will need to acquire a long range lens too. Very confused as don't want to buy a camera that is beyond me - K10D perhaps but don't want to buy one that will let me down.

Any tips appreciated!

I confess that my first SLR was a Pentax and I loved it. Great camera. But with a once in a lifetime trip such as yours, I think you want to focus on lens quality. A camera can only record the image that the lens gives it and if the lens isn't up to snuff, it doesn't matter how great the body is.

Which is why I would want to point you towards Canon and Nikon. Traditionally, the best lenses in the business. And if you want to grow into your camera, but not have one that's beyond you, the Canon Digital Rebel XTi is a great place to start. 10MP. Optical IS. plus it has a great lens feature that shakes off the dust via sound waves to keep it clean. And although you don't get the sonic cleaning with it, old EF Style Eos lenses fit like a charm and you still get full auto modes.

The beauty about it is that you can run it all on automatic, and slowly transition to a more manual style as you experiment.

This is where I'd be pointing you.

Thank you for that. Is there much difference with buying Canon Lens for it or would the Sigma ones be as good? I have seen a lot of positive things on Sigma but not sure if they are biased... you never know really and it's a minefield :-) I'm thinking of getting a wide angle lens and also one up to about 200mm or so.

On some of the reviews it is on about errors with Lens etc. Do you know if there is much fall out from this camera - do you own one yourself?

I appreciate all your help very much by the way.

There are some okay Sigma lenses, as are Tokina. When I was selling cameras in college, we were encouraged to emphasize these third party lenses because we got commissions (called spifs) on each one we sold. As such, I hardly sold a Canon lens and much to my regret. If Canon offered spifs on their higher quality lenses, they'd sell a whole lot more of them.

At this time, I don't own an SLR. When I got the baby, we decided to go with a point and shoot for convenience. I really haven't shot serious photography since college.

But if I did, I can tell you I'd go with Canon lenses for it.

Since you already own a Pentax, I am assuming that you already own some Pentax mount lenses. That should be a consideration in choosing a new camera body.

That said, I shot Minolta film equipment for ~25 - 30 years which was, unfortunately useless in switching to digital. They were all manual lenses, none of which are compatible with the Minolta (now Sony) digital bodies. I went with a higher level P&S digital (Panasonic FZ20) and, after a couple of years with it, got the itch to get a DSLR. The automatic functions were unimportant to me, since I was quite comfortable with the technical aspects of photography, so I boiled my choice down to what was important to me, namely, I wanted a camera that would be reliable, produce good images, have a wide range of available and affordable lenses & accessories, and be comfortable in my hand. In addition, I wanted in-body image stabilization, but lack of it wasn't necessarily going to be a deal breaker.

When I set out to handle cameras, an extremely important part of the process, by the way, I had pre-judged in my mind that I was probably wind up with the Sony, but was open to whatever felt right in my hands and met the other criteria. I was a little skeptical of Pentax, since it was so much less expensive that the competition.

When I got to the camera store, I handled all of them; Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Sony. I summarily rejected all the 4:3 cameras (not enough lenses). The Canons felt too small in my hand and the Sony, my pre-shopping first choice, just felt strange. The two cameras that felt the best were the Pentax and the Nikon.

In comparing Nikon vs. Pentax, I decided that I didn't want the Nikon D-40 0r D-40x since I would have been limited to the lenses made specifically for that camera. So that left me comparing the D-80 with the Pentax K-100D which really felt terrific in my hands. So Pentax was my choice.

I got it at the beginning of October and have used it pretty extensively since then, taking it to Utah, Las Vegas and Washington DC, as well as using it at a Cleveland Indians game and my daughter's school play. I have to say that I am impressed with its ease of use and image quality.

Back to your original question, though. The K-100D has some pretty extensive scene modes as well as program modes to allow you to use it pretty much as a P&S camera. At the same time, It has the full contingent of manual controls to satisfy a long-time photographer, such as myself. While I don't have the K-10D, I presume that the controls are pretty similar. That was a pretty long-winded response, but I guess that the short answer to your question is that I think the Pentax would allow you to use it as a beginner and eventually grow into its more advanced functions.