Getting rid of some old camera gear (and getting some new stuff)
For some time, I have been considering getting a "full frame" camera. Old film cameras took pictures onto a 35mm piece of film. Digital SLR cameras use a sensor rather than a piece of film to capture the picture. Many DSLR cameras use a sensor that is smaller than a 35mm piece of film. These cameras are often referred to as "cropped frame" sensor cameras, since the sensor corresponds to a cropped portion of a 35mm film frame. However, better DSLRs have a sensor that has the same size as 35mm film. These cameras are known as "full frame" sensor cameras, as the sensor is the same size as a full frame of 35mm film. There are advantages and disadvantages of cropped sensor and full frame cameras - cropped sensor cameras effectively mean that the lenses are more zoomed, full frame cameras tend to have a better quality. The other main disadvantage of full frame cameras is that they are more expensive.
After some thought, I decided that one way to offset the cost of a full frame camera would be to sell some of my old gear. I have therefore spent time over the last week collecting together my old Pentax gear (camera bodies, lenses and flashes) as well as boxes, lens caps etc and sent a list to Warehouse Express to see how much they would give me for part exchange. As they were prepared to take most of the gear off my hands and pay me something for it, I decided to find out more. I also decided that I should also part exchange one of my Nikon lenses that would not work well on a full frame camera and replace it with the equivalent lens suitable for a full frame camera. I therefore took all the bits into their showroom in Norwich. They were (very) slow in checking my gear over (rather than looking at the gear while we went for lunch in McDonalds, the salesman decided that it would be better to start serving other customers and therefore we had to wait over an hour when we got back for him to check everything over which nearly resulted in us walking out!). However, in the end we decided to do the deal, and I am therefore now the proud owner of a Nikon D600 (which a couple of new lenses) and so have both a cropped frame and full frame camera and so have the best of both worlds.