Never use Live View. Batteries seem to last for ever... so long in fact that I used to worry that the spare would lose its charge. However, it never does (unlike the spare AA batteries for my K100DS).

Many thanks to thread starter and the contributors, I have used Program mode often since I bought my K5 five months ago, without fully understanding it and its relationship with the green button.

But now, finally, I "get it", and I agree that it is exceptionally useful. I use it most of the time, along with M and B (with various drive and focus configurations).

Well all this price hike talk forced my hand and I rather like my new 10-17 Pentax fisheye, bought this week from SRS. Old stock, old price.

I won't need any more lenses now for a long time, by which time things should become clearer. All I'm going to say about the principle behind all this is that it's entirely up to Pentax-Ricoh to decide how best to grow the brand, and that isn't necessarily by selling their stuff at low prices.

I just hope they know what they are doing!

One thing that irritates me about these reviews is that they don't look at real World use by real amateur photgraphers (the vast majority).

For example, I never post or print photos larger than "half size" (about A3/A4) and I probably never will go larger than that. Therefore, it would be helpful to know how prints or screen views at that size compared, using different lenses.

I suspect that most of the Pentax lenses slated for lack of sharpness would be pretty similar to even the sharpest in the range (or by other makers) under those conditions. If so, I could then get better value for money from my purchases.

Sharpness is not, of course, the only important measurement but knowing the real-World result of these tests at the most common photo sizes would be helpful, and not at all difficult for testers to provide.

18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL WR boxed was a bargain at £49, so I bit.

It's gone up to £79 now, thank you SRS. If it ever rains again down here, I can go out in it!

DFA Macro 100mm F2.8 is listed as discontinued on Pentax Japan website.
DFA Macro 100mm F2.8WR is listed as current.

http://www.pentax.jp/english/products/lens/index.html

Mind you, they haven't updated the lens roadmap yet!

All they need to do is put the black bits off the top of the silver version onto the black version and hey presto! It's black!

But they already have a so-called black version so it would have to be the "All Black" version - including hopefully the designer's signature on the bottom (arrrgh at that!).

Quick shift is a life saver when in a quiet environment with this lens (e.g. concerts!) as you can quick-shift a manual focus while in auto-focus mode. You then get a click while it autofocuses instead of a much more noticeable "WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR". Very handy, is quickshift!

Thanks, that prompted me to test it using a large party balloon with neck cut off, it made a seal anyway. The lens did indeed pump air but the pressure seemed fairly low at non-macro focal lengths and with a rear lens cap on, no rear pumping at all, so there must be air getting past the lens seals too. Important to avoid end to end hunting when the camera body is wet, I guess, so I'll be careful!

But I do wonder how much of a problem these body air leaks are in practice re. water ingress, as I haven't noticed any reports of K5 failures because of it. On the other hand, there are many reports of problems for other reasons. I'll definitely take more care in future though, when out in the rain.

Modern electronics can be a wonderful thing. My daughter has put her iPod Touch through the washing mackine twice (fault of her kids) and the first time, when she didn't know how to open it quickly during a wash, it was in there for well over 5 minutes!

Two weeks of drying later, it worked pretty well again - and after a month it was back to 100% (the screen being the last thing to recover). As you discovered, wet electronics does not necessarily mean a lost investment (though a camera would obviously be a bigger risk).