I tried selling one of these on here before Christmas - ended up dropping to £350 and still no takers. Put it on eBay last week and it finally fetched £413.00 (of which quite a bit was swallowed by eBay / PayPal fees).

I have to say that I think £440 is a bit optimistic to be honest but good luck anyway!

The lack of a hot shoe and the inclusion of a "macro" button makes me think this is more likely to be a bridge camera than an interchangeable lens one. Still, PMA this week so all should be revealed soon enough...

I tried it out on one of their spare bodies so no pics to show I'm afraid. In fact the only pics I did come home with were ones taken with my own K10D/D-FA100 and the new macro flash (which was the star of the day for me by a long margin).

It was well made, whisper quiet and focussed quickly - I'm sure if you're in the market for such a thing then it won't disappoint.

Not my cup of tea though, far too big and heavy for my liking and certainly not a discreet lens! Having said that, nor are the 70-200/2.8's from Sigma and Tamron so they're not on my shopping list either...

Hello Matt and welcome to the forum

I was impressed by the ring flash too

Not so keen on the 60-250, a bit big and heavy for my style of shooting. I liked the 200/2.8 more than I expected to and I still like the little 35 macro.

The thing that I found myself thinking about most on the way home though was the K-m; tried it with my FA43 attached and, while not exactly pocketable, was nicely compact and discreet.

Full technical specs here: Link

User reviews here: Link

Photo gallery here: Link

Short answer: No.

For £500 you could probably get a Pentax A*300/4 which has the all-important "A" setting on the aperture ring to let you use all modes on the camera. It's still manual focus though, for AF you're probably looking more in the region of £750 and upwards.

If you're comfortable with manual focussing then the A* is a very good lens optically and at f/4 is a lot faster than any of the zooms mentioned above (not to mention much sharper, even wide open).

When you take a photo using flash, the shutter speed is *effectively* the duration of the flash burst - regardless of how long the shutter is *actually* open for.

So although the camera has set the shutter speed at 1/60, the actual speed will be somewhere in the region of 1/30,000.

The exception to this is where the ambient light is bright enough to neccessitate a shutter speed faster than 1/180 (the maximum flash sync speed); in this case you need to lower the ISO, stop down the aperture and/or use an external flash with a "High Speed" facility. This is usually when you're photographing against the sun outdoors.

Still, at least your lens isn't broken.

I'm not sure which lens you've seen as Pentax have made several over the years with a similar focal range and slightly different features; none of them were white as far as I know, but two of them were available in silver so I'm guessing it's one of those you saw. They are:

Pentax FAJ 75-300mm f/4.5-5.8 AL
Pentax FA 80-320mm f/4.5-5.6

The latter is the more recent design and (although not in production) may still be available new from some places if you search for it. Neither will give you the same quality as a good prime of course!

It would also be worth looking at the Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6 LD Di Macro. Although it's got "designed-for-digital" coatings it is a full frame lens with a proper aperture ring. You can find these new from most stockists at below £100 and they offer good (not spectacular) results for the money. Reasonably sharp anyway.

As for a good fast 300mm prime then you leave the "bargain basement" and move into a much higher price bracket. Something like the Pentax M*300mm f/4 (manual focus, no camera communication for aperture) will probably cost you around £400 for a 30 year old example - you then move up to something like the Pentax FA*300mm f/2.8 (still available new to special order) which will probably cost nearer £4,000. The other fast 300mm primes fall between the two extremes.

If you give us an idea of how much you want to spend then we could probably make some more useful suggestions.

What mode are you using the camera in normally? If it's in (P)rogram mode then it could just be that that happens to be the speed the camera feels is most appropriate.