I do think the older, shorter zooms are better in terms of image quality. It's well known that the wider the range the more compromises need to be made in the design, but I also think Pentax paid a bit more attention to build quality then. Zooms were intended to be almost as good as primes but more flexible, so the prices were pretty high. By the AF era the "kit zoom" was a standard thing, some being much better than others.

There are places where you simply can't get closer/further away or swap lenses. For example, with any luck I'll be attending at least one off road motorsport event this summer. There will be dust and the ground will be rough and muddy, conditions where you do not want to swap lenses. I'm therefore planning to use my sharpest 28-80mm zoom as that will cover both entire vehicle action shots while standing in a safe place and the same shots when vehicles are in a place that would take ages to scramble to. I could probably do it with my 28mm prime and crop the longer distance shots, but the zoom is just a bit more flexible and has AF too.

I'd go with the 18-55mm and 50-200mm, neither is horribly expensive (there are a lot of brand new 50-200mm on ebay UK at the moment for under £100) and between them you cover most situations.

After that I might see if there was space for something like a 28mm prime (or the 21mm DA Ltd if money is no object). I'm a big fan of the old manual primes as they're relatively cheap, compact, light and sharp. Ideal for making your camera a bit less obvious and therefore less of a temptation to light-fingered types in some areas.

A T-34 wouldn't be too hard to find. The Imperial War Museum at Duxford have at least two, one of which was very much in working order and producing its own smokescreen when I last visited!

Pentax K1000 (I know there are nicer to use manual cameras, but the K1000 outlived most of them).

English Electric "Deltic" diesel loco

SRN-4 Hovercraft

I use Av or P, although obviously I go to M if I'm using an old lens. Thing is, while you're fiddling in manual you can easily miss a shot, hence leaving it set to P most of the time.

If you don't mind manual lenses (and for portraits they're likely to be fine) then I'd suggest looking at the old 55mm f1.8. A little known and excellent lens, although it might be a bit too sharp for flattering portraits.

The K 120mm f2.8 or its M series equivalent might also suit although they're hard to find. I've used mine as a portrait lens on digital, for a head and shoulders shot you'll be about 3m from the sitter which I suspect helps to get a more natural look than being closer with a shorter lens. I really bought it for motorsport photography as it was fast, sharp, and pretty cheap.

Land Rover (the same basic shape since 1958, and not much of a change from the original 1948 shape)

The Lego brick - the basic brick designs are still going strong, although they've added a lot of new ones and tweaked the tooling on the older designs.

More likely that some petty pressure group has "got at" the district council and they've banned it in the interests of a quiet life.

Nike of course won't care - getting your advert banned is pretty much the best publicity you can get as suddenly all the local media are talking about it and your product has now acquired a bit of a rebel look.

The one that always gets me is how the mass media is quite happy to show people being killed in war zones but leaps six feet and screams if a costume gets ripped and a nipple shows. Rather skewed priorities there I'd have said!

I think it must come down to the individual lens then. I have the Takumar Bayonet 28mm f2.8 (mechanically and optically identical to the later M 28mm f2.8 but minus SMC) which isn't too bad but just can't match the contrast and colour rendition of SMC lenses, same goes for the non-SMC Pentax-F 28-80mm. I might have been hasty calling them nasty, but you can do far better for the same money if you keep your eyes open.

Maybe we should have a short list of things that even the worst LBA sufferer shouldn't buy? I'll start:

Any non-SMC Pentax lens (other than pre-SMC Takumars - generally if they left the SMC off on a K mount lens then it's a cheap and rather nasty piece of glassware)

Pentax-F 35-80mm (It has SMC. It lacks much of anything else IMO!)