Started getting into photography, and a friend recommended a Canon P&S for me, with full manual controls. (Old 4 megapixel thing). He also let me play with his old Pentax screw-mount camera. I don't remember what it was, but it had a hand-held light meter and bad light seals and a 55mm lens. It helped me take some amazing photos, so shortly thereafter I bought a K1000 to play with. I was never able to get as good photos out of the K1000 as I did from is old pentax though. The 55mm had a specialness about it, and my K1000's light meter was so inaccurate, and the ground glass focusing screen so awful, that I ended up with a lot of underexposed, blurry shots. Then that friend bought me my first zoom lens, a Sigma UC-II 28-105. It was damn near impossible to use on the K1000 though, but I kept it safely in my camera bag and never used it.
I went through a bunch of P&S cameras, and though they had higher megapixels and more options, I was never happy with them. They were either miserably slow, had terrible picture quality, terrible noise, or were just awful at low light. (Some were combinations of all of these). I decided I wanted a camera that I can use to take pictures in more than just bright light, and that takes a shot the microsecond I press the shutter button. A camera that doesn't have to think for 10 minutes between shots. After lots of research and a superzoom bridge camera (Sony DSC-H50 with the f/2.5 lens on the wide end -- still crappy ISO performance and JPEG artifacting even at ISO100), i decided I'm tired of spending money on inadequate crap, and that i was just going to buy an SLR. Since I already had that Sigma AF lens, I decided it would be a Pentax.
I bought a K-x kit with the 55-300 and 18-55 and never looked back.
Funny thing is, the whole reason for getting the K-x, the Sigma lens i had... wow that lens is a piece of crap. The 18-55 is way, way sharper. Way. But I still keep it because it was a gift, and because I don't want my friend to know what a stinker it was
Charles.