I'm hoping this is the "brightening from the west later on" the Met Office promised for today. Want to go out and play with the mirror lens, see if I can get anything worth keeping!

I'll take some as soon as I get the former out - had a look just now but the clay still hasn't hardened properly so will leave it for a day or two. It was really a way of using up a spare pack of clay I had hanging around (bought two packs a couple of years ago to make 1:76 scale cobblestones for a model tramway but only needed one)!

Pentax evidently improved the design in the KM and KX, as I doubt my Spotty is much older than those two and they seem to expose perfectly (providing you meter properly to avoid the sky overpowering the foreground and so on).

I'll try the Spotty again soon and see if it was just my metering technique, I've since learned to point the camera at what appears to be the mid light intensity of a scene and meter from there. I've only had a handful of wrongly exposed shots since adopting this technique, even on slide film.

Interesting - my spotty seems to overexpose by a similar amount! It works perfectly but the scans come back very pale (same scanner settings I use on film shot with other 35mm bodies, which are fine). It could be the mechanism slowing down or more likely the metering just isn't as accurate as that in the KX or MX.

It should do, I spent ages smoothing all the joints! Not sure it's the best of ideas though as apparently the clay I used is notoriously brittle.

Well I did try to make a beaker or something similar but the sides kept collapsing and looked rough. The former should mean the top is fairly even and the surface is fairly smooth!

I found a second use for those plastic bowls salad comes in today. Combined with a leftover pack of modelling clay I should have a fairly decent ornamental bowl (using the plastic one as a former) when the clay hardens. Always assuming it doesn't fall apart when I attempt to remove the former!

Pointless enough?

Quite - although I wonder if they're a bit leery of making multiple lenses with the same focal length for fear of losing sales of the more expensive one. I suspect the 35/2.4 may well have tempted a lot of people who'd otherwise have saved far longer and gone for the 35/2.8 Ltd.

I used the Pentax-M and then SMC Pentax 28mm f3.5 as walkabout lenses, both were pretty much focus free as by the time you had a subject properly framed it was generally in focus at infinity.

TBH I think Pentax need to make all the DA-L lenses they can. Not everyone can stump up over £300 each for a set of lenses and there's only one lens between the DA-L kit zooms and the Ltd/* range at present. I don't see the appeal of a 50mm though - it's in something of a no-mans-land in DSLR lens terms for me. I'd rather see something like a 20mm and a 135mm with similar features, quality and price to the 35/2.4.

As for expensive hoods, I bought one of the 3rd party copies for my 18-55mm and it has never given any trouble. I just wish something similar was available for the 35mm as nobody seems to make one yet.

There seems to be something of a mad rush for the old SMC Pentax 30mm/2.8. Now, I do have the theory that the silly prices of some older lenses are down to collectors rather than people buying them to use, but I still think Pentax could do well to return to the 30mm focal length as it's obviously sought-after.

I do find myself wondering whether they've run one of those focal length statistic programs on the EXIF data of images submitted to the PPG. This would show them what focal lengths are most commonly used and therefore if there are any gaps in their range.