I don't know about the not replacing a boot drive. An SSD can go a long way in improving the speed of an older Dual Core or Core 2 Duo Intel CPU Dell. I have several older Optiplex systems that I replaced the drive with an SSD and the improvement was significant. Today you can get about a 500gb SSD for well under $100 or a TB drive for just over $100 and this might get you a few more years out of that platform. Not being that familiar with the Dell Inspiron, if there's room in the case like there is in the Optiplex mid tower, you can have a 2nd and possibly 3rd internal drive for your photo storage. My extra drives connected via the eSata port.

I had a Dell Optiplex (business computer) with a 4th gen Core i7, 32gb ram, a 250gb SSD as my boot drive and about 4tb of disk drives. After about 18 months the power supply failed and the replacement power supplies also failed. Probably a motherboard problem. So I built my first home built since 2007. It was ~ $1000 and I reused my spinning hard drives and put a 500 gb M.2 pcie SSD for my C: drive. I went for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 cpu, MSI X570 MB, 32gb of DDR4 ram, a Geforce GTX 1650 (lower end) graphics card with 4gb ram with two video ports (I have dual Dell U2412 monitors, 1920x1200 resolution). I packed it all into an Antec tower case with 8 - 3.5 drive bays, 1 - 5.25 bay and two mounting points for standard SSDs. The MSI mb has two mounting points for M.2 drives (only one in use) and 6 - SATA ports. This system will load Win10 in less than 7 seconds. The old Dell Optiplex took as long as 38-40 seconds to load Win10. I use On1 Raw 2020 for photo editing and it does fine.

Your mileage may vary. It was a fun build and lots to learn. Building PCs has changed a bit since 2007...

I have purchased numerous M42 lenses from KEH and have been very pleased. I had one issue that they addressed very quickly. I bought a SMC Takumar f/2.8 105mm lens. When it arrived it was working, but the next day the aperture ring had come loose preventing any aperture adjustment. I contacted them about it and they sent me a return shipping label and said if they couldn't repair the lens they would refund my money. About 12 days after I shipped it back to them it returned fully repaired and it has not malfunctioned since. That was about 4 years ago.

I have since bought my first camera from them. I got a Sony A5000 body only and use many of my M42 lenses with an adapter with this camera. I am coming up on having the A5000 for a year and have not had a single issue with this camera.

The graphics card that came with the system is an AMD Radeon R7 250. Been a great system for me so far.

I have never purchased a consumer grade Dell (one from Best Buy, Office Depot, Costco etc) because I have heard and read about machines that don't last or have other issues. Working for a hospital that used Dell's business line of PCs turns out they are a higher grade of machine. I also have learned of dellrefurbished.com where they sell off lease business machines like their Optiplex line of desktops and their Latitude line of laptops. I have done quite well with these machines as they are all refurbished. I almost always have to add some items to what I purchase, but I stay within these guidelines. For desktops I go for the minitower. My most recent purchase was a year ago and this is what I got. Optiplex 9020, 4th gen quad core i7 w/16gb ram. (current gen is either 8 or 9, I think) It came with a 320gb hard drive which I never powered up. Came with a 2gb dual head graphics card. After the discount mentioned below I paid $249 delivered for the PC. You must sign for the shipment.

I pulled the 320gb drive and got a 250gb SSD to load the OS on. I always check to make sure the original system shipped with at least Windows 8.0 for this reason: it will be listed in the "what's included" for each system. If it shipped with Windows 7 I ignore it. If it shipped with Windows 8 or higher, you can install Windows 10 Pro 64 and it will install activated. The activation code for systems that shipped with Win 8.0 or later is embedded in the firmware on the motherboard. (this is true for all system makers, not just Dell) I have about 5tb of disks on this system (pulled them from the old system this one replaced). I only put the OS on my C: drive and store everything else on D:, E: and F:. I also have another lower grade system, also an Optiplex with a core 2 duo that has about 7tb of disk space that I keep duplicate copies of all my photos on. I have a cloud based backup solution on the backup system so most of my photos are in three places for safe keeping. I periodically delete older photos off of my main workstation to keep it fresh and I can always pull older photos off of the backup system.

The installation for Windows 10 Pro 64bit is available from Microsoft's website as a download/or upgrade. Choose the download and put it on a thumbdrive. You can install it from there.

At the bottom of the page on the Dell website there is a link to sign up for their email list. They periodically send codes for as much as 50% off their listed price on anything on the site with free shipping. More frequently the discounts aren't that good, but still pretty decent. They have a 100 day warranty, which is sufficient since most systems will show any problems within that timeframe. You can purchase a year warranty if you feel more comfortable with that, but I never have. I would also go to Wikipedia and search for Dell Optiplex as they list every model Optiplex Dell has made with technical specs like what CPUs are supported and how much ram is supported, etc.

That is what I do for my systems. My previous Dell was a core 2 duo and I was able to edit photos on it, but it was a little bit slow even with 8gb ram. This new machine is vastly faster and the 16gb does make a big difference as it shipped with 4gb and I removed it and added 16gb. All told I probably have about $400 give or take a little in it and am pleased. I don't game so I don't need higher end components.

I started with film in the mid 80s and found myself being able to compose good shots quickly, even with manual focusing. Several years ago (2005) I was asked to do a wedding for a friend. I charged them $250, and told them I would put the photos on a CD/DVD and also posted them on my web server out of my basement that they could send their friends to to view the photos. My camera was a point-n-shoot superzoom by Konica-Minolta, a Z5 for which I got an external flash.

After I got my first DSLR in 2006, I was voluntold by my wife to take photos at a local Christmas Tree Festival, taking photos of children with Santa or families with Santa or any background they chose at the festival. This has given me a lot of experience doing this type of photography. In the last 2+ years we (my wife and I) have taken on when asked various events for friends or friends of friends. First did a wedding and charged $250 (seems to be a magic number) with limited editing and put everything on two DVDs. (Also video taped the ceremony.) Did senior pictures for a neighbor and we charged them $50 putting the photos on a DVD. Both events turned out well, photos being well appreciated. BTW, Pinterist is a good source for posing positions for senior photos and other events. Just do a search.

At the end of the school year, 5th graders were moving on to middle school in a rural town near where we live and they had organized a "dance" with a DJ and pizza. They wanted someone to take photos so my wife volunteered us to take the photos. We created a photo booth in the corner of the dance hall, took spontaneous photos on the dance floor and anything the kids wanted at the photo booth. No charge for this.

This summer a friend of one of our good friends was looking for a photo shoot. It was an elderly couple and the wife didn't have many photos of her husband and he was undergoing cancer treatment. Their grandkids were in town and she used that as an excuse to get him to do the photo shoot. She had the location in mind and we charged $200. My wife is creative and positions the folks and I take the photos. Since this was a specific request, she also brought her camera and snapped spontaneous photos in between the posed photos. We made no promises on number of photos, but considering the request we were very prolific and handed them over 500 photos on a thumbdrive. These turned out to be some of the best I've ever shot.

Each event should be taken separately and considered for what it is. If you don't personally know your customer, try to find out as much as you can to get a feel for the event. Use your judgement to know what to charge. If you're expected to edit photos take that into account along with the time you spend taking the shots.

If you can have a creative helper it makes things go smoother and lets you concentrate on taking the photos. As I mentioned above, if you're not sure how to pose folks for the event, Pinterist is a great source for this kind of information. (for senior graduation photos, search for gender specific information and as somebody else mentioned, use their interest, band or sports, etc as props) It's always easier when you can control your lighting.

There has been a lot of good ideas entered here but my 10 years experience doing the festival has helped me gain the confidence I needed to attempt these other type events.

Good luck!

Like another poster, I have been using K-mount cameras since 1986. My first was a Ricoh 35mm film camera and then a Pentax 35mm film as well. I have stayed with Pentax and got my first DSLR with the K100D since the IBIS would allow all my older lenses to take advantage of the IBIS. I have since moved up to the K-500, and then the K-S2 and finally the K-70. Each step has been an improvement over the previous. I have accumulated a collection of M42 Takumar prime lenses (24mm - 200mm) as well as three Russian M42 lenses which I have really come to appreciate. My K-500 has a K-mount to M42 Pentax adapter and I use it with the M42 prime lenses. IBIS works great with the M42 lenses.

This past spring I came upon an inexpensive Sony A5000 body only from KEH and acquired it to see what all the fuss was about w/mirrorless. I had heard that the older M42 lenses worked well with mirrorless so I was going to use my M42 lenses. It does not have an EVF so only live view is available and the screen is almost impossible to see in bright sunlight. Initially I thought focusing would a challenge, but then I learned about focus peaking. It gives me about a 70-80% success in focusing using the live view screen. This also led me to learn that my 3 Pentax bodies also have focus peaking in live view mode as well. I was not aware of this. I had already replaced the focusing screen in my K-500 with a 45 degree split screen which improved focusing there, but in live view the focus peaking helps. I got an M42 to E-mount adapter and a K-mount to E-mount adapter for the Sony and use the M42 lenses and Pentax-A and Pentax-M lenses on it. Two of my Russian lenses, Helios M44 f/2 58mm and Jupiter 9 f/2 85mm both seem to bottom out on my K-500 with the flush mount adapter and wobble when mounted. They also can't focus to infinity with the slightly raised adapter, but on the Sony with the extended adapter they shine. I have never used a native auto focus lens on the Sony so I can't speak to that but with the manual focus lenses they take great photos. I do miss the IBIS on the Sony and that may account for the 70-80% manual focusing accuracy I get with the Sony.

Overall, considering no EVF on the A5000, it is more of a novelty for me. Anytime I am going to do a photo shoot for a family or take landscape shots, I reach for my K-70 and the Sigma f/2.8-4 17-70mm. I prefer looking through the lens. I also prefer if I have the time to use manual focus lenses like my Pentax-A f/1.4 50mm and Pentax-A f/3.5 35-105mm zoom. For long reach I also have a Sigma f/4-6.3 18-300mm which does a pretty good job. I can use my Pentax-A lenses on the A5000 and they do a nice job but I still struggle a little bit with the focus and lack of IBIS.

Maybe if I had a native E-mount auto focus with built-in stabilization I would have a different opinion, but my goal was to get a feel for the mirrorless format. The Sony fits in my backpack nicely with about four prime lenses and one mounted on the camera so it is always with me, but when I go out for a photo shoot, my K-70 is my go to.

I too am originally from NNJ (Bergan County) but now live in North Georgia. Spent many trips on I-81 in the late '70s and early '80s just to avoid the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and DC. Western NC is beautiful. There are many places to see. Roanoke, VA is about 7 hrs from Middletown and there are many places to stay. I would also suggest getting off I-81 as soon as is convenient and get on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is vastly slower than I-81 (many 15-25 mph curves with spectacular vistas) but if you want a scenic drive there is none better on the East Coast. Grandfather Mountain and the spectacular Linn Cove Viaduct nearby are two attractions along the way.

Blue Ridge Parkway and the Linn Cove Viaduct

There is a lot of info on the BRP at the above link so you should get a good feel and find plenty of info to satisfy your interest in the area. There are many scenic attractions. Ashville, NC is spectacularly beautiful and could be a destination on its own (Biltmore House). Same with the Smokies, but you will be right next to the Smokies in Knoxville.

Enjoy your trip and travel safe.

Welcome to UHH! I also have a K-70 as well as a K-S2 and K-500. The K-70 is loaded with features that others in its price range just don't have. I have dedicated each body to different lens types. My K-500 has an m42 to K-mount adapter and I have a host of m42 (screw mount) prime lenses that I use on it. I replaced the focus screen with a split screen focus screen like came in the old 35mm film cameras which helps with manual focusing . My K-S2 also has a split screen focus screen and uses manual focus K-mount lenses, either Pentax-A or Pentax-M. One of my favorites is my 50mm f/1.4 which takes great shots. On my K-70 I use my auto focus lenses. I have the "plastic fantastic", 35mm f/2.4, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-f/4 and another Sigma 18-300mm f/4-f/6.3. My wife uses the 18-135mm you are getting on her K-S2.

I got started in 1986 with a Ricoh Kr30sp 35mm film camera that uses K-mount lenses. Then a Pentax ZX-M film camera. Between the three digital bodies I can use all my lenses. I cut my teeth on manual focus lenses and feel right at home using them over the auto focus lenses.

It's so refreshing to see so many folks come out of the wood work who are Pentax photographers. Most of the posters use other manufacturers equipment and I don't think I have ever noticed any other Pentax users here. I spend a fair amount of time over at Pentax forums for Pentax specific information, especially the lens reviews.

Hope you enjoy your new K-70 once it arrives!

I have a web based subscription to an offsite backup. Runs about $5/month. All my photos are backed up, good ones and not so good ones.

I also am the photographer for a local Christmas Tree festival and put most of my photos on the festival's website (most are of local kids with Santa that parents want).