Likewise, in case more votes carries more weight in some circles... not that I'm trying to deprive Chris@SRS of his well-deserved profit.

Look at the numbers (taking Chris' prices):

DA* 16-50 F2.8: £469

DA 16-45 F4: £200

and the DA 17-70 F4 SDM: say £380

Ok, it's got a bit more reach, and SDM. But who would pay nearly twice as much as the 16-45, and only 90 less than the 16-50?

Especially since the 50-200 and 55-300 are both much, much cheaper.

Unless there's something extra special about it, methinks they've got the pricing a bit wrong for the 17-70.

Well, the thing it's got that the 16-45 doesn't is SDM.

It doesn't have the body-driven focus, of course, and they claim that going SDM-only is to reduce costs!

So unless it's optically much more difficult, I can't see how a near DA*16-50 price is going to work. So I hope you're right. 17-70 is quite handy.

I take your point... I meant just that they've fixed the dearth in a blink, rather than bringing them all out one at a time over several years.

Maybe they took the view that they couldn't afford several years.

They must have been busy bunnies for quite a long time.

Heavens. That's a lot, for a non-star lens.

You've got to hand it to them. Seemingly within the blink of an eye, we've gone from bemoaning the dreadful lack of Pentax glass, to being almost spoilt for choice.

Just the super long ones needed now. Not sure by whom, but maybe even they will come in due course.

There are two types of ND filter.

One is ND across the whole filter. It's for making the whole frame darker - so that you can open up the lens, for example, to get less DOF, even in very bright light.

The other type is graduated ND, where half the filter is clear, and half ND. This is commonly used for reducing the exposure over part of the frame - sunsets, for instance, where the dynamic range is very high, and to expose the darker foreground correctly would burn out the bright sky.

Both types are worth having. They all come in a variety of EV reductions, and the graduated ones sometimes have quite a sharp cutoff between clear and ND, and others a more gently blended transition.

When I bought my K10D one of the first things I did was sell all my Cokin filters on eBay, except a polariser and a graduated ND, and the adapter, of course.

I got £30 for about 5 of them (warming, blue, starburst etc) and was very pleased with that.

I've not had the slightest need for them since.

NDs and polarisers are very much worth keeping, though. I can't see how there'll be a digital equivalent of either of them any time soon.

Fantastic. I'm sure you'll have a fabulous time.

The downside is that you'll know what to blame if the pictures aren't too good...

Economise?

Have you seen what the OP is buying?

(Jealous? Moi?)

If you really want to know what people think about filters, you should search for the several threads where the debate pro- and con- has raged.

In summary:

- evidence for actual image degradation (other than wide-angle vignetting) with a filter seems anecdotal at best

- SMC coatings are tough, so gentle cleaning of lens front elements is Ok

- the Pro 1 filters are very thin, and one person here reports that they shatter into scratchy shards quite easily.

I do commend the relevant threads, though (there've been several), for entertainment value at least.

I use UV filters. I never bash the front of my lens on things (well, not so far) but muck of various kinds is forever getting on the filters, and I'd rather clean those than the front elements.