All genuine Pentax lenses seem to be going mad of late - 28mm f2.8s for £50?

I really think Pentax could profitably wind up CaNikSon by making a cheap-but-decent 28mm AF prime. Other brands have a cheap 50mm f1.8, on an APS-C sensor the 28mm focal length gives a field of view close to the perfect 43mm on film. Pitch it at about £150 or so and they'd sell plenty.

I think it's more to do with the fact that if they hassle a press photographer the reaction will be swift, merciless, and seriously damaging to their PR. The rest of us don't have an editor willing to print "Our Photographer Obstructed By Police" or "Police Abuse Counter Terror Laws" if we get hassled, which must make a difference.

What puzzles me is that many of the small minority of Police who behave in this way would probably point to Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, The Professionals and/or The Sweeney as "how Policing should be". I don't recall any of those fictional characters hassling people just for taking photos, in fact Cowley went out of his way to demolish a senior officer who was abusing Police powers and ignoring the law.

Genuine Pentax prime lenses wider than 28mm seem to be hard to find - I very seldom see the 24mm and they usually go for mad money.

Google are likely to notice the site on their own IIRC - I know I wrote one for a volunteer group which was rapidly picked up and indexed without any effort on my part.

It probably costs me around £5 to buy and process a roll of Ilford HP5 (taking into account the chemicals and a share of the purchase price of my daylight dev tank), not much outlay considering how much fun it is!

My active film collection is likely to settle to a KX, MX, and ME Super, the latter two being fitted with power winders. I do have several others but those are my three favourites. So that's one body loaded with B&W, one loaded with colour slide, and one resting.

I still think about an LX, only thing putting me off is that even scruffy ones seem to go for £200+, with the additional viewfinders and winders similarly priced. I'll agree they're nice cameras but I'm not sure they're £150 nicer than an MX...

That's promising - if it was the "7dayshop" monopod then I have the same one. I've only used it once so far but it felt pretty solid.

That last one looks like the results I get from stitching images taken with a 28mm together, the distortion isn't all that visible.

Regarding stopping support for pre-SP3 XP machines, judging by their previous approach this will just mean that you'll have to install SP3 before it will allow you to update anything else.

That'd be me!

Although I can't take the credit. I found it listed on another site where a few people reckoned it to be only just behind the K 28mm f3.5, which in turn seems to be regarded as the best Pentax 28mm prime. As a result I bought one and I've had no complaints. You can blow images taken with it up to a surprising degree without making them unusably fuzzy. See these two:

[IMG]http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/Landscapes/IMGP1377.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/Landscapes/IMGP1386.jpg[/IMG]

No alterations, shot as JPGs and simply uploaded then reduced to 640x480.

It looks pretty handy as a lens cloth mind - might just buy it for that even though my chances of being hassled miles from human habitation are slim!