I can see the Bigmas being very popular as rental items, especially during airshow season!

You could try asking here, he did a great job of cleaning a 200mm prime for me a while ago and charges very fair prices.

My main complaint is that the cheap split prism makes the image too dark, especially if you want to use a polarising filter or similar. I would have changed back if I hadn't managed to scratch the original screen, now waiting for a replacement.

The M 200mm f4 seems relatively plentiful for around the £100 mark, or look at the M 75-150mm f4 which is a superb zoom. Slightly more recently the A 70-210mm f4 has a good reputation.

I realise these are manual lenses, but the IQ is such that it's worth the effort and besides which motorsport photographers in the '60s captured some iconic images with completely manual cameras.

My K-m buzzes when switched on, but has never simply gone "KLUNK". I'm not worried as it did that when I first set the sensor cleaning option in July 2009 and it doesn't appear to have changed in tone or duration.

It's quite good for scaring compact owners when they turn the camera on and it shudders in their hands!

Have a look at the Failbook site too - similarly stupid posts contributed by users who've seen them.

I'm not sure if it says something that most of the really idiotic ones seem to be from the USA...

I'm expecting good things from my 120mm f2.8. However, I realise that's not the easiest lens to lay hands on so I would suggest looking at a Pentax 135mm (SMC Pentax f2.5 if you can find it, failing that the Pentax-M 135mm f3.5 is cheap and sharp).

I got my OEM K-x screen from here

They don't list one specifically for the K-m but as the K-x has the same body (and I suspect shares a few components in common) I thought it'd be a safe bet.

The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway is worth a look too, they're working on extending to Broadway at the moment. They have some big diesels as an antidote to Cotswold tweeness!

Had a rather interesting one from a Nikon user today, which I wasn't able to answer. Hopefully someone here can! Does Pentax SR cope with tracking?

Apparently the Nikon VR has a tracking mode, I've yet to try tracking shots with my K-m so obviously I'm not sure if this is something that Pentax gear just deals with?

I suspect it does as we seem to have a lot less trouble in getting the camera to do what we want than users of some other systems. The same chap was about to send his Nikon full frame body off for a £200 sensor clean and looked rather wistful when I said that current Pentax sensors are pretty much self-cleaning, with a rocket blower covering for situations where the sensor shaker doesn't clear it!

Regarding advice, it does come down to reading around. There's no single correct way to do most things aside from basics like depth of field and which lenses are worth owning. I know I have two which suffer from lousy reviews on the other site but are actually very decent.