Time to throw away that old camera and buy a digital, methinks.

G

I paid about £90 earlier this year.

G

Agreed; the 280 is an excellent flash. The AF240Z is good if you're really on a budget.

G

I thought only the D had a dedicated battery grip.

Personally, I find NiMHs work very well. Just ensure they are well-charged.

G

To sum up, all these lenses have their own particular strengths, which will make each of them the right choice in a specific situation.

It therefore follows that you need one of each.

G

In your place I would go for the 16-45. Unless you know that you have a definite requirement for that extra stop, it is better to go for the lens that will have the highest picture quality, and that is almost certainly the 16-45.

Bear in mind that a digital camera at ISO 800 is much better than ISO800 film, and even 1600 is usable. Do you really need the extra stop?

G

It all depends what you want to do with the lens. If you expect to spend a lot of time shooting wide open, then the 16-45 might not be a good choice.

But if you really are going to be shooting a lot in low light, you might be better off with a couple of fast prime lenses. In low light, autofocus doesn't work well, so an MF lens is often a better bet. And when used wide-open, M lenses operate in Aperture Priority mode, so the camera will set the correct shutter speed automatically without the green button.

So how about a M 50 f1.4, or a K 50 f1.2, along with an M 85 f2? The other 85s may be outside your budget.

Any 50 f1.4 or f1.7 would be a good thing to have anyway.

G

The chaps on the PDML are planning to petition Pentax with a list of what they consider to be the most desirable features for putting onto or into the next DSLR.

The more people who respond to this, the more chance there is that Pentax might take notice. It's a bit of free market research, and the bigger the sample size the better.

So, please take part. It's open to all present or potential Pentax DSLR owners.

http://www.donsauction.com/Pentax/

Best wishes

G

Mac,

When Asahi introduced the K mount, most of the new lenses were (I believe) simply SMC Taks with a bayonet mount.

So if you have a look at the K lenses (ie, the ones without a suffix) on Stan's site, you will in most cases be looking at opinions on SMC Taks.

The M lenses, however, were mostly redesigns.

http://stans-photography.info/

G

Matt's quite right. ISO 800 on the *ist D is very good.

Also, try getting closer to your subjects, if you can. The power you need to light a scene increases in proportion to the square of the distance. So if you are twice as far away, you will need four times the power.

G