Unfortunately I can't see Pentax offering cheaper primes. Modern zooms are good enough for the consumer market, so they price the primes at a level that serious enthusiasts are willing to pay. Thankfully, because they've kept the K mount those of us who like the sharpness but can't stump up £300 for a lens can buy the older primes and use them. I'd like AF versions of my primes but for the same price as an FA 50mm I've been able to buy 28mm, 50mm, 135mm and 200mm manual focus lenses (total cost of all of those together was around £250, and they are genuine Pentax).

Bear in mind that if you're in the UK (basing this on the Jessops item in your signature) and that lens is being sold from outside the EU you will probably get stung for VAT and a "collection charge" on arrival here before your lens is released to you. This can be quite steep, some carriers demand outrageous fees for collecting customs charges. Just something to be added to the total price!

It's a great lens, I'm just not sure how suited it is to weddings. I've never been especially interested in portrait photos, as I like driving out into the hills in search of landscapes (and some of the most entertaining roads on the planet :lol.

Here are a couple of shots I took with mine:

[IMG]http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/Landscapes/IMGP0889.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/Landscapes/IMGP0894.jpg[/IMG]

It's not a wide angle lens but this can be helpful as it crops out unwanted foreground distractions.

It's manual focus but auto aperture - just set the lens to A and switch your camera to manual focus.

The Nikon/Sony/etc won't fit your Pentax DSLR, you need a K mount lens.

The Pentax-A 50mm f1.7 is a great lens and a lot cheaper, however it's manual focus. The one you've found is an auto focus lens. Both will work perfectly on a Pentax DSLR and become a 75mm lens when you take the crop factor into account.

All genuine Pentax K mount lenses will fit their DSLRs, from the original 1975 K series to the latest DA L range.

The A 50mm f1.7 is a great lens - I have one in similar condition that I love using as it's tiny, sharp, and fast. The plastic aperture ring isn't nice, but with a DSLR you simply set it to A and don't touch it again. The focussing feels much nicer than a modern AF lens, with far more feel.

Price is a tricky one. I paid £42 for mine a couple of months ago but prices seem to have gone a bit mad of late and I did have the advantage of spotting a listing that was simply titled "Pentax 50mm". I saw a fungus-infested example hit £36 around xmas, which is utterly insane money for a less-than-perfect example. I don't think you paid much over the odds however, from looking at other listings.

The first one came out at 961k, I think Photobucket may be trimming them as they all seem to be around the 800-900k mark as fresh JPGs. I'm not sure they'd be suitable for printing large format but for archiving/uploading/printing normal size they seem ok.

Yes, that looks like mine. Mine's dark grey rather than silver though.

Here are a few unretouched scans:

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/PICT0005.jpg
From a not especially good 1980s/early 90s negative, scanned in for the subject matter as this ship left European waters long ago.

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/PICT0052.jpg
From the mid 1990s - somewhere in there is my Great-Grandfather's grave

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/PICT0053.jpg
Another not-especially wonderful shot - scanned in so I could work out the location with a view to going back later this year and getting some better photos. It's the dam at Llyn Clywedog in Mid Wales

I've posted links as I haven't done anything to these photos other than upload them, so they're a bit big.

It would be quite neat to have a single box that takes an undeveloped film in and produces negatives and an SD card of scanned images. Unfortunately I have to use two boxes for this - my Rondinax daylight developing tank and my Ion negative scanner!

I'm quite surprised that Pentax haven't tried to make a digital ME Super - call it the ME-D, make it a similar size to the original, and go after the PEN cameras with a full K mount SLR that's no larger or heavier than them.