You will need...

A lens spanner/lens wrench

Cotton buds

Vinegar (kills fungus)

Surgical gloves (to handle the elements with - avoids fingerprints during reassembly)

Microfibre cloth

Lighter fuel can be useful for un-sticking the element retaining rings - I think Pentax tightened these then gave them a lick of matte black paint to act as threadlock. Lighter fluid will not damage the paint but will enable you to unscrew the part.

1:1 macro lenses are able to reproduce objects at 1:1 scale as I understand it.

You can easily get 1:1 with an extension tube of the correct length.

I have noticed that some fairly priced items tend to hang around for ages. Everyone is trying to pay less than market value so they tend to ignore the BIN lots.

Well, a 180mm f2.8 is never to be sneezed at. I take it the lens is PKA rather than AF?

Makes my 120mm f2.8 look tiny!

Mine is this old warhorse. Mine had a bit of dust inside, which departed when I aimed a can of compressed air into any gaps I could find. It's optically perfect but has evidently been well used as the body is very shiny.

The earlier of the two FA 100-300mm lenses looks to be optically identical but with Power Zoom. The zoom is internal which probably helps as you don't end up with a potentially wobbly section of lens poking out of the front.

Of the recent bodies PZ only works on the K10D, K20D, K7 and K5.

Yep, absolutely.

The f2 version of the 50mm is under-rated IMO, you do need to stop down a bit to get the best results but this goes for all lenses. If you ever decide it doesn't meet your needs then you should be able to sell for about the same as you paid for it.

Make sure you set the lens aperture ring to "A" (press the button to turn it past f22) and the camera to manual focus, you will also need to select 50mm from the menu which appears when the camera is turned on for SR to work properly. The camera will remember the last focal length used, so after doing it once you just need to press OK to confirm when the menu appears.

I spent three years studying it. A few classmates went on to Sandhurst afterwards, not entirely sure I'd have wanted to be anywhere near them on a battlefield!

The 7 billion thing is purely estimate. Many countries lack the framework to report population accurately, so the best guess is that it will be today. It's quite likely that we already have more than 7 billion people on the planet.

As for the "occupy" movement I think they have a point but are not exactly helping their cause with some of their antics. Occupying St Paul's is not really going to bother the stock exchange much, and certain media outlets are already going out of their way to discredit the groups involved by demonstrating silly mistakes for a campaign (like most of the tents allegedly being empty overnight).

As said above you don't really need a manual, although I can understand wanting one for the sake of completeness.

Assuming that the loading/winding/rewinding and ASA setting are obvious then just set the camera to Auto, pick an aperture, and look through the viewfinder while half pressing the shutter. A green light means a shutter speed of 1/60 or higher (fine for hand-held shooting with the kit 50mm, in other words), a yellow light means 1/30 or slower (tripod needed). This is the main weakness of the MV/MV-1 - you have no idea whether it has picked a high enough speed for a longer lens. I generally use the Sunny 16 rule to get an idea of whether it will have done so and stick to wider apertures on longer lenses to make sure it keeps the speed up.

There is a red light to indicate that the camera can't handle the lighting, try adjusting the aperture if this comes on.

I'm not sure about the MV, but the MV-1 (which I'd guess uses the same shutter and electronics) can produce exposures much longer than you'd expect. I had a roughly 30 second exposure from mine last winter when I wanted a shot of the local supermarket. Just balanced the camera on the car bonnet using a mini tripod, set the lens to f22, then used the self timer to trigger the shutter.

The 100 setting is for use with non-dedicated flashguns, the camera will also default to this if the batteries die. B is self-explanatory.

The MV lacks a self timer, but a standard cable or air release will fit instead and is probably necessary for long exposures as there's no other way to trigger the shutter hands-off.

TBH I thought the original Pentax-F 100-300mm was reckoned to be the best of the bunch at that focal length? It was when I checked shortly after buying my K-m anyway, so I bought that one.

Bad points: It is heavy. It is slow. AF hunts unless you have good light and contrast for it to work with. The new lens is most likely sharper, I suspect crops from my DA* 50-135mm would be sharper. But I paid £60 for it, and it was a good compromise for the first year or so of DSLR ownership. I keep it to use with my SFX and as a long lens for digital use, although I seldom use anything longer than 135mm there.

Funnily enough you never hear the pub landlords moaning about the cheap supermarket booze killing their business, just the smoking ban.

Personally I point to Wetherspoons. They were non-smoking long before the full ban and it did them no harm whatsoever, which would suggest that those suffering since the ban have other problems with their approach to business!

I just wish they had non-smoking beer gardens. I like sitting outside on a warm evening but don't like wafts of smoke while doing so. Now the smokers have taken over the outside tables you're often stuck inside.