I've got several "nice" lenses (the FA Limiteds spring to mind ) but nothing really out of the ordinary. If Pentax made a 400mm f/2.8 then the chances of me being interested are negligible, I'd hate to think how much they'd charge!

The only piece of non-existant Pentax exotica I could see me hankering after would be a tilt/shift lens, if one of those was introduced then I'd be sorely tempted I reckon...

Other than that I'd quite like to see a DA135/3.5 in the style of my Sonnar, but Pentax covers pretty much all the bases I'm likely to want or need so I'm contented.

Oh well, at least I'm in good company then

I'm not fond of grips and I just carry a spare battery in my pocket, I think I might be in the minority here though

Out of interest; on your example did you Photoshop in the reflection of the lipstick or was it present in the Plexiglass anyway?

They do CD's, but I can't vouch for the quality at every branch (having said that they have won awards).

I've used some fairly expensive mail order places and Snappy Snaps have proved better than all of them. Shame they won't touch 120 film or I'd use them exclusively tbh.

I use my local branch of Snappy Snaps and I have found the results to be superior to any of the (several) mail order outfits I've tried. If there's a branch near you then that's where I'd recommend trying.

Yes.

The fungal spores are already inside your camera body, they're inside every lens you own and they're part of the air you breathe day-in and day-out.

Under normal circumstances they will remain dormant and invisible, they'll only cause damage under specific conditions (warm, dark, damp as a rule). What you see on the lens isn't the fungus itself, rather the trail left behind by it.

The fungus eats the nutrients inside your lens (hence it's more prevalent in older lenses where he elements are stuck together with Canada Balsam rather than today's synthetic adhesives which most fungi find unpalatable), it then secretes an acid as it moves along the lens surface. The acid chemically etches the coatings on the lens and it is this that makes up the "spider's web" that you can actually see.

You can kill fungus with prolonged exposure to UV light but it's hard to know whether the job's been effective or not. If the "web" isn't growing over a period of time it's pretty safe to assume the fungus is dormant so I'd only bother with cleaning if it made an appreciable effect on image quality.

To stop further outbreaks you just need to make sure your lenses are kept dry, cool and ventilated when they're not in use.

Got it in one!

Lovely colourful picture - I also like the way the red manages to dominate the others and the range of tones in the white areas.

I think it's the "Bright" coatings that the more recent screens get to make them bearable for use with slower (f/4-f/5.6) consumer zooms that give the problems. I've read of the problem persisting with a coated Katz-Eye screen but gone with an uncoated example (which presumably has the same properties as the older Pentax screens).

This is also borne out by my own observations that slower non-A lenses (f/3.5 and below) don't give the same problems metering as the faster ones, even using the standard K10D screen. The camera almost certainly applies some form of compensation when a fast "A" lens is attached as it will know what the maximum aperture is - perhaps if there was a way to manually input aperture in the same way we input focal length then the problem would be solved, one for the next generation maybe?

Given that the majority of DSLR owners probably don't have much beyond the kit lenses then I think Pentax is wise to bias the metering to their advantage, however, it would be nice if Pentax made an uncoated screen as an option for those wishing to use (fast!) old glass.