I'd watch out for 'unbundled' kit lenses - it seem thet the K7 is only going to be £30 more with the kit 18-55, so some dealers may unbundle lenses for ralatively small qunitiies of money.

£1300 though... I could get a K7 for that!!

Just discovered that the Pentax 17-10 SDM vignettes slightly at 17mm with a standard thickness polariser screwed on to the front (and no I didn't have any other filters on!)

Moral - buy thin filters for this lens!

In fact it is the aperture apparent when looking through the front of a lens, not the actual physical dimension of the aperture, divided by focal length.

If it was the actual size of the rear opening a 300 2.8 would be a bit tough to produce! Hence the limiting factor is the diameter of the front element. If you look through the front of a long, wide aperture lens you will find the it appears to be the same width all the way through, even though physically it gets narrower.

[edited for typos]

MZ7, 30, 50, 60 also. The latter three in fact cannot use the aperture ring and the lens has to be set to A (hence the FA-J series of lenses without an aperture ring)

As Beakynet says all other bodies which have program or shutter priority mode (super A onwards) can use the lens but only in program or shutter priority mode as there is no way to set the aperture. This also means no manual mode.

Probably - but in August. My K10D has done me good service in many ways but this looks a big step up! I'm hoping the 'real world' price will be c. 999 at the point. Trade in my K10D & my 16-45 & 55-200 now I have 17-70 & 60-250 & It should not be too much of a shock to the wallet...

looks like a K10/20 to me...

Given that the Pentax US site says the new K is coming on May 20th and several people appear to already have them, perhaps Pentax dealers in the US (and perhaps even in the UK - Steve are you listening? Silence implies agreement ) are recieving stocks even as we speak but are obliged to keep quiet about it

One can but hope

You have to admit this slow leaking has created a lot of interest among enthusiasts at least!

Most medium to high end flatbed scanners have the option to scan slides and negs. My Epson V500 does a good job and will do 4 mounted slides or up to 12 frames of film strip at a time. If you don't need to tweak them too much that can be quite quick. I also have an older Monolta Dimage III film scanner back in the UK, and there is not much to choose between the two really.

All the medium (100-150) telephotos of the K/M/A are at least very good. I have owned and used the M 100 2.8, the M 120 2.8, the M 135 3.5 and even the non-SMC K 135 2.5 (which does not have so good a reputation - sharp enough but contrast a bit weak) and all gave me good results. My current posession in that range is the A 135 2.8 which I find to be a very nice lens out in the field, great for low DOF shots and seems pretty sharp even wide open. CA seems mnangeable too, though pairing it with a close up lens caused me few problems.

The 200 f4, however, has a fairly modest reputation. I had one but there was no real advantage over a zoom so it rarely got used.