I've purchased from the US and Canada when in Australia and had real savings along the lines already mentioned. I made the mistake of purchasing a Pentax flash from the US while staying in the UK and was hit with a huge import duty which blew away any savings made. So my advice is if you are resident in Australia then it's well worth it but not so if you reside in the UK. In any case it's well worth seeing what is available locally. If it is a fair price and not too inflated I prefer to purchase from a local store.

Sorry to hear of this Clarky. Having had a similar thing occur may years ago I think I know what you are going through. I had my beloved ME Super and other personal items taken in a burglary and it was most upsetting. I have since always had home monitoring which seems to have helped. At least we haven't had a repeat. It's not so much the physical items, which can mostly be replaced, its the violation felt afterwards.

I tried one, not that model mind, and found it virtually useless. It converted a good 50-200mm Pentax lens into a dog. Not one usable handheld photo with the teleconverter in use. Maybe I wasn't using it properly but it was a disappointment. Just my two cents worth.

So it's true then! Good to have it in the Pentax range. I'll be tempted.

Today the lens has been removed from the Pentax Imaging website. A mystery. It's not April 1st so I assume someone in marketing has got ahead of themselves and published the web page a little early.

I see with some amazement that Pentax are releasing very soon a new lens that was not forecast on their lens roadmap. It's possibly the Tamron 18-250 reworked but even so I'm just very pleased to see action in the digital lens range beyond 200mm. I suppose that means the roadmap is out the window. It is listed at http://www.pentaximaging.com which states it will be'Under $500'.

I had an ME Super SE which was stolen many years ago. jps is correct in that the only difference was the diagonally split focus screen and 'SE' on the front. It came with a black case. Bl**dy good camera!

I hope its not the same issue I came across with HP cartridges that although the printer was boxed and sold in England, when the first set of replacement cartridges were required it turned out the printer was set up for another region and had to be reprogrammed for use in England.

Thanks for the various comments. Some interesting perspectives on the topic.

Richard, I think I will take your advice and see if I cannot try one of the Tamrons. I've also yet to try a K10.

Thanks

I have a very nice K100D and Pentax DA 16-45 and 50-200mm zooms which are also rather nice. Both lenses chosen after advice obtained from this forum, so thanks for that.

When out and about I do find myself changing lenses quite a bit so I was thinking that the convenience of the new Tamron 18-250 zoom or similar could be rather handy. Not that I really have this sort of spare cash at my fingertips, just thinking about it as you do.

Then I thought of the inevitable compromise in image quality that such a zoom range implies.

I then considered for that sort of money I could probably get another camera body. Yes, I would have to swap cameras to go from the wide angle range to telephoto but it would offer some other flexibility such as additional storage capacity and I would not loose the image quality.

Am I just being lazy or is this the sort of thing an amateur photographer can consider doing? I guess it depends on budget and how much kit I'm prepared to carry around, not that it's that heavy or bulky.

Cheers