1. I still wonder where K1,2,3,4,5 & 6 went?

2. The card door seems much larger than the K20D SD door....CF size?

cheers Steve.M. (Pentax might finally have made the DSLR I have been waiting for....)

"It amazes me when looking round other forums how many photographers (mainly Canon and Nikon users) will not touch any lens that is not autofocus"

I do not get how you can think this...if this were true, then why are 1000's and 1000's of lens adaptors for mf lenses being sold?

The amount of Canon EOS users using Contax/OM and other older manual focus lenses is quite staggering.

..great name for a rock band...

Hi,

"£6.00
Seller's Standard Rate
Service to".........it's far better to specify exactly what postal service you are using...'sellers standard rate' is meaningless. Bidders can then see if it will be fully insured, if the post service suits the item etc....

IMO buying a very high quality lens and then lowering the IQ by using it with a converter seems like defeating the object...

Giclee is nothing more than a clever marketing word...a fancy word that means nothing more than 'ink jet' roughly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e

...people who make 'art prints' use the word giclee to try and give the (often false) impression that the prints are somehow special...

Fron an ergonomics point of view, Pentax seem to be copying Nikon...judging by the close up photos of the buttons and their placement.

"Agreed, B+W are superb filters"

Agreed. However, everyone forgets (or does not know) that HELIOPAN are just as good. Same Schott (Zeiss) glass, same brass mouns, same superb construction and materials and also German made.

Pete..as an earlier post shows..I do both:

Overseas/ International Bidders:

Bids welcome from: USA, Canada, Ireland, EU ( but NOT exceptions below), Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea.

I CANNOT ACCEPT BIDS from, or SHIP TO: China, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, former Russian states, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria or anywhere in Africa.

For me, I have found this to work very well. For about five years I was selling lots of Contax & Zeiss gear, a lot of which was high value, which is why I became much more careful about where I shipped to.

cheers Steve.

"Out of interest, how did you compile that particular list of countries?

I ask because I've sold items to buyers in every single one of them (except Indonesia) and I've never had so much as a sniff of a problem"

bretbysteve wrote:
I CANNOT ACCEPT BIDS from, or SHIP TO: China, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, former Russian states, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria or anywhere in Africa.

Hi Hefty,

The two known extremely dodgy states are Nigeria & Indonesia. The vast majority of sellers avoid both. Nigeria is full of scammers, inc vast amounts of mobile phone scamming. Indonesia has an almost constantly damaged infrastructure due to the frequent natural disasters. I am quite shocked you shipped anything to Nigeria.

Italy & Mexico for decades have had corruption not just in their postal services, but also in their police forces. Again, many sellers avoid these. I had a lens disappear on its way to a Mexico buyer. He subsequently told me himself, this is normal in Mexico.

As you say, far east bidders are the most polite people I have found anywhere. I agree 100%. However I have had to block many bidders from China, I was getting lots wanting to bid, but it was clear from their questions that most were new to ebay and had little idea of the 'system'....and I simply decided it was not worth the risk. I also found, that although they were very polite, it also became clear that language problems were sometimes an issue...and combine that with any dispute and you can have real problems.

There is also, a bad history of Chinese customs giving trouble with imported items. So, although most bidders seemed perfectly nice, I took the decision to stop Chinese bidders.

I do however ship often to S.Korea, Singapore, Japan and sometimes, Malasyia.

Romania and Bulgaria (less so) has a high percentage of theft. Often the ATM problems of credit card info theft in the UK are due to Romanians.

I had two issues with Russian bidders and decided to stop sending to Russia & the former states.

When I started on ebay about 8 years ago, there were far fewer problems with overseas shipping, however as ebay has become so prevalent in the farthest corners of the globe, many more bidders from 'possible dubious' locations have used ebay and many scammers from the less well known states have caught on how to work the ebay system to their advantage.

I get such good prices for my items that I see little point in taking any more risk than I need to. I have also found that even though I list the above states as 'not shipped to', I still often get some very serious potential bidders email me anyway and ask to be allowed to bid. I then check their f/b and often let them bid anyway...as long as I can 'veto' them first.

I also make good use of the ebay sellers ability to block individual bidders and set my sellers terms in the ebay sytstem..ie block bidders with -1 f/b or lower, block bidders with non payer strikes etc, in the sellers preferences.

cheers Steve.