I second your opinion! The Tamron SP 90mm f/2.8 macro is not only excellent for macro, but outstanding for portraits! As far as percentage of keepers, this lens wins above all the other lenses I've used.

The new Pentax 100mm macro is probably also very good. The Sigma 150mm macro is also known to be good too.

The following are all photos taken with Pentax *ist D cameras:

Travel:
http://www.trekearth.com/photos.php?cat=camera&id=872

Artistic:
http://www.treklens.com/photos.php?cat=camera&id=872

Wildlife:
http://www.treknature.com/photos.php?cat=camera&id=29

You can find my review on-line at:
http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_online_print_services_update_2004.php

In short, I found photobox.co.uk and ofoto.co.uk to be the best ones.

I have a PK (M) 2X teleconverter and it works as expected; however, when trying out a Vivitar PK-A 2X teleconverter in the shop, it didn't have any reading or control of the apature as it should. My lenses work fine w/o the teleconverter in this way (using Pentax A 28 & 50 mm lenses).

:
Has anyone had any luck with the apature working with PK-A or PK-AF teleconverters on a Pentax *ist D?

When shooting slide film, I noticed a significant increase in colour saturation with longer exposure times. Smaller apatures not only gave greater depth-of-field, but also more vivid colour.

I'm now shooting with the same lenses and having a ball with an *ist D; however, I don't see the saturation changing much with shutter speed. I am happy with the levels of saturation I get (yes, I am aware of the camera setting), but was just wondering.

The ones below with two stars indicate that I also find these very useful for digital as well as film.

** polarizer
* 81A, B or C
** neutral desity graduated gray square filter

and there are a few nice to have ones:
** ND (non-grad) filter
* 85
* 82
** sunset or other square graduated filters

Maybe they will cut back massively on 35mm film bodies, but Pentax makes great medium format film equipment (Nikon & Canon do not). If Pentax wants to drop making 35mm film lenses, that would be silly, but there will be little impact for us. Along with Pentax, I've found great results from the Tamron SP series lenses and I'm sure the Sigma EX series and Tokina AT-X Pro ones are great too.

In the worst case, if your lens is discontinued, your camera doesn't stop performing so I don't see why anyone would switch camps so fast.

Thanks for the tips about noise removal.

(after looking in the manual I answered my own question partly too...)
Yes, the remote control can control the bulb.

However, I get the impression that *ist D mirror lockup won't work with the remote (?)

Does this mean that the optional remote control with the *ist D in bulb mode can be held open for some time? I'd like to be able to hold the shutter open with it for any particular amount of time, ultimately while using the 2 second delay for the mirror lock up.

On the *ist D the mirror lockup is real. Just set the delay timer to 2 seconds and then the mirror locks up, then the exposure starts 2 seconds after. After the exposure is complete, the mirror comes back down.