Why is I creat a scene, all looks fine until I hit the rendor button - it starts rendering, but leaves the sky black until the render has finished. Is this normal?

Also, when I load an object & position it to how I want it. I hit the render and the object seems to distance itself abit. Not sure if it's my camera settings- any advice would be great.  

When using Radiosity or Global Illumination, the first pass lays the groundwork for the photon distribution. Since the sky will not be changed by the photon distribution it is left out of the process.

It's hard to know what is going on with your camera without specific information about the camera settings.

The Main view window does not use the actual camera settings you choose.  The mini-preview render does though.  The main view also does not give clues that your camera is inside of objects.

Thanks guys