Great stuff. Where did you fly from? I see you're based in Essex, and there's lots of mud around. Rochester perhaps? Southend?

I do actually - not quite ready to put it up yet but it will be soon. It's in perfect nick as far as I can tell - SRS new ones are £509 now, so I'll be looking for around £380 though I haven't finally decided on a price yet. I bought it for £265, and spent £120 getting it professionally serviced at Johnsons.

Keep an eye out in the classifieds.

Talking of the K10D, that was my main camera before the K-5. My usage style hasn't changed at all, AFAICT, and I used to get over 400 shots per charge, easily. It would go months and months without charging if I was in a quiet period.

At two Farnborough airshows, about 1200 shots each, I'd just got on to the third battery.

Gonna need a lot more than that with the K-5 this year.

I would say, clearly yes.

You, of all people, John, have the most unrealistically pro-Pentax demeanour I've ever seen or heard.

To hear you write about Pentax, it is perfect. If it has flaws, we should be figuring out ways of working around them, rather than demanding that Pentax do better. BF/FF? Well focus manually, you fool. Slow AF? Prefocus, why don't you, they did fifty years ago.

If there's a comparison thread that portrays Pentax in a glowing light, there's no murmur from you. Whereas, if there's a risk that Pentax may appear in a bad light, you wade in with injunctions to discuss only Pentax.

I have to say, the other moderators are conspicuous by their silence.

I'm trying to rein in my exasperation here.

What part of

... am I misunderstanding?

Subjects, and images. Absolutely.
Exactly. How can a discussion of a Pentax camera or lens, in comparison with another brand camera or lens, with the intention of better understanding the pros and cons of the Pentax, not be "Pentax-related"?

Smegs made a very telling point indeed, IMO, with this:

I couldn't agree more.

If your objective is to boost Pentax, I think we should be encouraging such comparisons here, not acting as if they're a great taboo and thereby giving the impression there's something to hide.

I think the original owner was from Ireland. I bought it from TimothyW but I thought he got it from someone selling a job lot of Pentax gear. I can't find the original classified ad that he bought it from though.

Planning to, yes.

Ok, but if they still increase, rather than being picked at random, or according to some other algorithm, a later serial still means a later build, right?

Even if a lot of K-5s and remote releases came between them, it still suggests that my 'new' 17-70 is really old stock?

Er, true.

I bought a 17-70 from Amazon the other day, since the price was excellent.

I thought I might be able to sell the one I already have for around the same price, and keep the new one for the warranty and the fact that it's less used.

Not that there's anything wrong with the one I had - it's pristine, and just been professionally service by Johnson's. However, a warranty is a warranty.

However, the serial numbers are as follows:

The one I already had: 6407xxx.

The new one: 4146xxx

Now, I'm sure they haven't really built nearly 6.5 million DA 17-70s, so the serial number probably isn't the actual number since manufacture.

However, I've always thought that later serial means more recently made.

Is that right?

I would really urge people to read the T&Cs, which are in fact very reasonable.

As I've observed before, there's nothing in them that bans comparison threads - which come under section 3g (emphasis mine, typos theirs):

[quote="PentaxUser"]3g. Please keep discussion to Pentax or Pentax releated subjects and images. Images taken with other brandes may be linked to if of Pentax-releated interest.[/quote]

Well this is the thing. I've had effectively the same results with three different batteries.

I really don't want to do the test properly - click click click, till the battery is exhausted - and then for the other battery.

A bit of a waste of 300 shots really