"but I really don't know who could monitor that"

...no one can. In essence retailers can do pretty much what they want to with prices. Also RRP's went the way of the dodo many years ago.

Oh....Chris said Pentax lens caps are dropping in price...wow.

Thats why I just bought a 55/1.4 from that very helpful Chris chappee..

According to SRS, the K20D will go up by approx £100 and the rrp of the DA 55/1.4 up to an earth shattering £849 however the actual price will be lower....great..

"You are perfectly in your rights to approach Microglobe and say that you want the lens for the price it is advertised"

...quite so, however the retailer has no obligation to sell at the advertised price and can say NO. It may seem odd, but under UK law, any advertised price is simply 'an invitation' to buy and not a contract. The retailer can refuse to sell any item at the advertised price.

cheers Steve.

Shim just made another VERY good point. They want ebay users to be unable to contact other ebay auction winners...hiding bidders ID's does this. The ability to contact others also as Shim says, often prevents users being scammed.

I once contacted an auction winner to say I thought the items they had won were fakes. The outcome (3 months later) was that I was right and the winner ended taking the seller to small claims court and winning. With hiding bidders ID's I would now be unable to contact the scammed winner.

Simply removing the troublesome 2nd chance scheme (as I said) would have removed the fake 2nd chance offers issue and users ID's could have stayed visible...however many users including me are of the strong opinion that ebay removed the visibility for OTHER reasons....do not believe all they say.

"Bidders are made private in some cases to prevent bogus Second Chance Offers and the like. That is a good idea"

In theory you are right...however have you heard of a thing called 'shill bidding?' ...a seller using a 3rd party to bid on his/her item and bid the price up? This is rife on ebay and hiding the bidders ID simply makes this FAR easier. Ebay gave some 'excuses' to hide bidders ID's which included helping to stamp out false 2nd chance offers (as you say)...however the real issue is shill bidding.

They could have scrapped the useless 2nd chance scheme completely, then forgot about the hiding bidders ID's nonsense and helped with the shill bidding..but they could'nt be bothered.

Firstly, Bear in mind that the K-7 looks like in many ways, it is just be-latedly catching up with the Nikon D300 & Canon 50D in regard to LCD size/spec, af and other specs. Whilst it may, or may not have better sealing, small size etc, I do feel it will be placed by buyers as a competitor to the two DSLR's I just mentioned.

Nikon D300 is approx £1200 & Canon 50D is approx £850.

I get a nasty feeling Pentax will put it at £1299....which will look poor value compared to the 50D especially. If Pentax go over £1299 I think they will struggle with sales and certainly will not get brand 'movers' to come over to Pentax, no matter how good the K-7 may be.

I expect £1299 with a drop to £999 fairly quickly. I may be tempted at £900, but certainly no more, especially bearing in mind how good the £499 K20D is.

Personally I have been fairly confused by Pentax pricing lately. Some lenses appear too high, whilst I have thought for some time that Pentax have been seriously underpricing the K20D by at least £100-150 and maybe more.

cheers Steve.M.

Hi,

1. Are there any worthwhile covers for the rear LCD screen?

2. Has anyone tried these?: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=29...

3. Anyone replaced the LCD screen with a new Pentax one, or knows how easy/hard this is to do?

cheers Steve.M.

"In fairness, there are no Canon EOS fit MF lenses since Canon swapped mounts to go AF"

...not so...but there are not many. The Voigtlander SL range of lenses had at least one lens (the 125mm macro) in EOS mount. Also, Zeiss recently started making their ZF/ZS/ZK lenses in EOS mount, called the ZE lenses. So far, the 50/1.4 & 85/1.4 are available.

The whole mf adaptor craze started about 3-4 years ago in Japan with full frame EOS users prefering to use the Contax wide angle lenses on their FF EOS's as the EOS wides are not so good.