But you don't have to mess around with them if you don't want to. It's a useful option for those that do, plus it's a zero marginal cost for those that use rechargeables for other things anyway, which is probably why they dispensed with it.

In terms of the subject of the thread I do think it is prone to CA so not a good alternative to an older lens in that respect. In absolute terms I regard it is a pretty decent lens for the money and the WR is an impressive feature for a kit lens. I held on to mine for that reason but I wouldn't really trust it with much more than snapshots, I think there are better options.

It's a shame they dispensed with the GRD series ability to take AAA's.

Dalek.

I don't find that with the K5, so I always treat the histogram with extra caution. Just a case of getting to know the foibles of what you are using at the time. I have twelve old primes in the 18-55 range. At f5.6 I prefer all of them to the 18-55, except when it's raining.

It's difficult to tell at such a small size. It's between 1 and 3, 2 looks overcooked. My hunchometer tells me that 1 would stand up to close scrutiny the best.

Good advice. The M42 lenses do have the big advantage that you can use them happily in Av mode. You can only use K and M in Av mode wide open. I prefer manual mode (pretty much always anyway, with newer lenses too). and I usually do a test exposure and pay careful attention to the histogram to avoid clipping the highlights, which is a pet hate of mine.

I don't think DA lenses are a magic solution to CA - many of them show fringing too. In fact I think ca is just as much of an issue with modern lenses as older ones. I struggle to get some of my older lenses to produce any ca, whereas some DA's I wouldn't touch due to CA. My DFA100 (not a DA but in the current catalogue) can produce horrible purple fringing for example, much worse than my old Tamron.

I think it's more a case of getting to know the lens and knowing the situations where CA is likely to be an issue, then minimising it and/or dealing with it in pp.

Having experienced some wild exposure variations with the automatic metering system I would have a different view on the consistency of its predictability. In fact I distrust it.

Is an empirical approach complication and unhelpful or (as I view it) the best possible grounding in this difficult art.

I agree it's up to us. But how does a modern lens help you understand light better than an older one?