There's always the Pentax FA35/f2 - no longer in production but still in stock at a good number of suppliers. A friend of mine has the Samsung-badged version for his GX20 and it's a fantastic lens in terms of IQ, nice and compact and relatively fast.

The Pentax FA50/f1.4 is, of course, faster still - and cheaper! To see if you'd get on with any of these focal lengths then just set them on your 18-55 and spend a day walking round taking photos *without touching the zoom ring*. Repeat on successive days with each length (35/40/50) and see what suits you best. You won't have the speed or the quality that the primes bring but it'll give you a feel for their focal lengths.

You might just find that 40mm is perfect for what you do or that 50mm isn't as constrictive as you feared. If 35mm is the one for you then at least you'll have proved it to yourself with logic - takes a little of the sting out of the wallet...

Personally, I just love the 43mm as my "standard" lens - it's a bit longer than I suspect most people would like but it just feels right to me. And that's the point, all of this is really subjective so only you will know for sure what tickles your fancy.

I think the main benefits of the 16-45 over the 18-55 (either version) are the extra 2mm at the wide end (this is actually a suprisingly noticeable jump) and the fact it has a constant f4 aperture (so it's faster at the long end).

If you took the same photo with both lenses somewhere in the middle (say 35mm) and at f8 I doubt you'd see any difference in the results whatever size you blew the prints up to. It's that extra stop of speed and 2mm of width you're paying for really so it'll depend on your personal priorities.

Welcome to the forum by the way.

It's (comparatively) easy to correct for distortions in-camera when the lens is fixed - ie. a known quantity. I think you'd have a lot harder time adapting the same technology to a DSLR as you'd have to include seperate corrections for any/all lenses that could possibly be mounted - on Pentax cameras that's a *lot* of potential lenses!

It wouldn't be impossible but I'm not sure how cost effective developing such technology would be tbh.

I'll pop down at some point - I'd like to see the ring flash

There are some real stunners in there already this week - I'd have an incredibly tough time trying to judge this one.

What an odd looking spider! Does it live on or around flowers that have a similar shape / colour scheme? I'm trying to work out if those spikes are camouflage or there to make it look even more intimidating than it already does...

Hello Luka and welcome to the forum

I don't know about Singapore specifically but looking at prices on eBay from Chinese and Hong Kong vendors show that for most items it's now cheaper to buy in the UK - a far cry from this time last year!

I've got a couple of books by John Hedgecoe and he uses Pentax cameras extensively (but not exclusively) in those too. He also used Rollei, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Leica, Olympus, Minolta and Nikon cameras but interestingly (to me anyway) never Canon. I'd say his Pentax shots make up around 50% of the pictures in his books with the rest spread fairly evenly among the other manufacturers.

I think these days books are generally written with "help" (read: sponsorship) from manufacturers so those with the largest advertising budgets get the most prominence. I have the feeling Hedgecoe used his own personal equipment and happened to be a Pentax fan...

I concur - I love floral themes