Takes a bit of finding, doesn't it. If you go the 'Pentax DSLR / Lenses' route down the menus, it's not listed yet, but if you go 'Explore our products / Cameras / Lenses / Zoom' then it is.

It's very good news I think. If it's optically the same as the Tamron, it'll have noticeable barrel distortion at the wide end, from some review pics I've seen, but at least that's correctable in software.

The convenience factor is huge - that range would have covered about 98% of what I needed over the last month on holiday, and I could easily have lived without the other 2%.

I'm sure there are other compromises too, certainly F6.3 at the long end is getting a bit slow, but I'll be very tempted to get one.

I'm not familiar with this tripod, so I can't say whether the attachment would be compatible or not, but I've used a Slik AF2100 for many years, and it's been superb in every way. I still have the original pan/tilt head that came with the tripod, but I never used it after getting the AF2100.

I was amazed to discover they still exist... at least 15 years (possibly 20) later.

Microglobe has them: http://tinyurl.com/2s89e4

There may well be an improved model now, but I've never needed to upgrade.

Could you (or anyone else that has both) give us an idea of what you particularly like about it in comparison, say, with the 16-45?

Excuse my ignorance, but is this common with wide angle zooms, even very good ones?

So much so that Pentax would have deemed this acceptable at the design (or at the latest, at the prototype) stage?

Supplementary question:

How good are enlarger optics? (or is it, these days, all to do with scanner resolution?)

For enlarging to a given size, this is self-evidently true.

But I thought the raison d'etre for medium format (nowadays, anyway) was that because of the bigger negatives, more enlargement was possible than with a smaller format.

So if the purpose of using medium format was to allow you to aim at a much bigger print, why would the lens not need to be as sharp?

Is it that the increase in print size commonly produced from MF negs is bigger, but not bigger in as great a proportion as the negative size is compared with a 35mm negative?

That's strange. In my experience everything's very secure. The 200 even has a couple of clips which make it almost impossible to open the main zips far enough to risk anything actually falling out.

Small items can move about a bit if they worm their way between the top of their compartment and the main zip-up lid, but they can't fall out.

And when you slide it round to the front, and undo it enough to get at the camera, it's not too hard to fish a lens out of one of the slots without opening it up beyond the clips, so you have a very secure box in front of you to hold the bits while you change lenses.

If you leave the clips undone, and fail to do the main zip up at all, then sure, it would flap open. But that's being determinedly careless, not 'not being very careful'.

Mine has been heavily used over the last month travelling around parts of Australia, and the camera and lenses have been in and out of it at least 150 times in all during that time.

It has some excellent points, without a doubt.

Being able to slide the bag round to the front and have immediate access to the space inside is fantastic. On rocky, sometimes muddy paths, having effectively a secure box in front of you making it impossible to drop anything, is simply marvellous, and IMO makes it worth having for that alone.

It also doesn't look obviously like a camera bag, a big plus in cities.

I do agree, though, that the way the dividers work is disappointing. The space inside is long enough to take my Sigma 400mm, but I couldn't arrange the dividers to make a long slot at the back of the bag (if where the camera goes in is the front), so I had to leave it behind.

Apart from that they were Ok - I took the K10D, an FAJ 75-300, FA 28-200, and the DA18-55, and that left space inside one of the slots for wallet and passport, and another for a polariser, although the polariser wasn't held all that tightly and tended to roam around a bit, so I can imagine your problems with the pancakes.

Other minor annoyances included the fact that unless I was very careful extracting the camera, the rubber eyecup would constantly get caught on the flap just inside the lid that closes off the pocket there. And since the RHS of the camera is thicker than the left, it can't go in straight.

That said, the cloth flap just inside the zips was very useful for protecting the back of the camera from the hand grip that I now use, which has various clips and straps that could potentially rub the back while it's closed up in the bag.

And the various pockets are pretty good. I had a light waterproof squished into the top pocket, which was quite useful not having to carry separately.

I think overall its good points greatly outweigh the bad if you're out and about with it but I do agree that the dividers are not designed with much flexibility in mind - all that velcro does is let you change the sizes of the pockets a bit, but without the flexibility for some (not all that obscure) lens configurations.

This is the Samsung 540. Please could someone tell me how similar the door and attachment looks to the Pentax one?

Out of interest, what is the angle of tilt?