.....oh no, the french Canadian snapper of girlies in frocks, who has single handedly swung so many Nikon & Canon users away from their useless cameras, caused them to see the light and buy Pentax, now has thrown down the gauntlet to the whole Hoya board of directors......

....Pentax IS SAVED....

Hiya,

...there is an SMC-M 35/2 on evilbay right now..in the UK..

cheers Steve.

Hi,

I have been buying & selling old 80's and 90's manual focus gear as a hobby for about 7 years now, including quite a lot of Pentax K items.

Up till about 2 years ago, you could find the f2 lenses reasonably easy if you waited about 3-4 months. You could find them on fleabay, on dealers websites and on the WWW, but over the last two years they have become FAR harder to find. The SMC-K ones are very rare indeed now, the SMC-M ones are hard to find and the SMC-A ones are like gold dust, due to the DSLR users buying them up..

cheers Steve.

Hi,

More is afoot at Pentax...you may want to check out these threads..

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00L6b5&unified_p=1

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00L6TR&unified_p=1

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00L6LW&unified_p=1

..Some facts and some speculation, but lots to chew on and plenty going on at Pentax, one thing is for sure, I think there is far more than meets the eye where the proposed Hoya merger is concerned and I am not at all convinced it would be good for Pentax if it went ahead.

cheers Steve.

Hiya,

Ben..without wishing to be too grumpy, or suspicious, but are you the new Pentax group marketing and advertising manager?

cheers Steve.

Hi,

George:

But he didn't say "loss leader". He said "just a loss leader", which changes the meaning considerably.

How?

please tell...

cheers Steve.

Hi,

Matt: "Even the title "Just a loss leader" is asking for an argument"

I am not sure why you say this? the term 'loss leader' is a common retailing term and has been for years, it is not in the slightest bit derogatory..simply an item which is sold at a price which has a low mark-up (with no profit) for marketing reasons.

John..re the Voigtlander (Cosina) lenses you mention..they do not actually make any fast teles as such and the whole range is now discontinued, although you can still find new examples which are hanging around places like Ffordes still unsold. The range was the Voigtlander SL range and consisted of 40mm f2, 75mm f2.5, 90mm f3.5 close-focus, 180mm f4 and a 125mm f2.5 macro, so it was a very limited range.

cheers Steve.

Hi,

Listen, Matt & John..and others. Don't be too hasty. The OP may possibly have a good point.

I am a retailer (amongst other things) and I do not think you are seeing things from a retailers or a marketers point of view. Pentax and the other DSLR makers other than C&N are pretty desperate to gain market share. They need to get people to 'jump ship' and get into the Pentax system. When the K10D was announced with the list of features, it sounded like a D200 competitor and I fully expected it to be priced accordingly. When the price was so low, I was shocked, so I can believe that this may well be a loss leader in order to get new people into the Pentax system and for Pentax to gain market share.

This may be wrong, but it certainly is a possibibility.

cheers Steve.

Hi,

George..I am not totally in the dark so to speak..

In 2005 I did a 3 month Pro Photoshop course at the same college where I trained to become a commercial studio photographer. The course was an introductory one and was using the full photoshop software. So I got some idea of what to expect and the 'gist' of digital editing. The scope of photoshop is daunting.

cheers Steve.

Hi,

Thanks to all for the help.

All I want is to optimise photos. I have no interest in manipulation.

Is silkypix easy to use and simple? and free? does it give high quality? as these are my only real needs.

cheers Steve.