Very few of the Pentax 28mm lenses are paricularly good anyway. The only exceptions are the (hens teeth) early F2 lenses the (common as muck) K28 3.5 and the (most recent) FA 28 2.8. I have the F 28 2.8 OK but not great and flares easily. Nice angle of view on a DSLR though.

I'll second the FA35 F2 if you can find one (either in Samsung or Pentax livery) - I got mine when they were about £200 new. It is one of the best regarded Pentax 'ordinary' lenses, compact, fast, great optically, a joy to use AF and a halfways decent focusing action for MF.

Then of course there is the 31 ltd...

[quote:3496ace15f="MrCynical]Am I right in saying though, that to switch from AF to MF on the Tamron I would have to operate BOTH the focus ring clutch on the lens, AND the body AF-> MF switch? Whereas on the Pentax I assume it would work the same as my other lenses ie body switch set to MF = lens is MF?[/quote]That is certainly the case with the Sigma 105 which is a bit of a pain occasionally, but as I generally use it almost exclusively MF when shooting macro and AF when using it as a medium telephoto it does not bother me too much.

The press release describes it as "Inheriting the high-performance optics of the renowned smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mmF2.8 lens" so it is the same basic lens except for the diaphragm:
"The PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mmF2.8 WR is the first PENTAX interchangeable macro lens featuring a completely rounded diaphragm blade. This creates a natural, beautiful bokeh, while minimizing the streaking effect of point light sources."

Cosina did a 24mm F2 and (I seem to recall) a 28 F2 which were well thought of. I had the 24 F2 years ago and it was great with film. A very solid lens - completely unlike the rather plasticky AF lenses (though their 100mm Macro and 19-35 lenses were pretty good performers for the money too - even if the construction did not give you much confidence)

Yes but according to that the K20D is also discontinued...

My relatively recent purchase of the 17-70 & 60-250 seems a very good move now (mind you, it seemed a pretty good move then)

My guess is the low price of the FA 50 was undermining sales of other newer lenses of similar focal length such as the new 55 1.4 or the DA 40. I wonder if its price has gone up eleswhere?

Apologies - I didn't mean to be insulting. I also use a P&S camera and I don't rely on the screen of that either - but then I have one that will give me a histogram. (not a Pentax so I better not mention its name here!). Generally I find that if I want to avoid blown highlights in contrasty scenes with the P&S I have to dial in about -2/3 exposure compensation, but of course it produces more attractive 'straight out the box' pictures.

Surely anybody knows not to rely on the screen of a DSLR (or any digital camera) to assess the exposure of an image. It is only useful for composition. If you want to assess the exposure you use the histogram. Camera screens are deliberately bright so that you can see the picture in daylight.

FWIW my K10 also 'underexposes' or rather it exposes so that the darkest area is black (unless the dynamic range is very narrow). This means highlights are almost never overexposed, and so no detail is lost. That suits me fine as I always tweak before printing.