Ahhh Cambrian, my other favourite shop...it's the only attraction left in Bae Colwyn

And my Golf Mk4 has Bentley Arnage/RR Silver Seraph door mirrors.

To answer your question Nigel, the FA lenses that continued to be produced had no direct DA/DA* substiture, the DA35f2.4 doesn't quite replace the FA f2 version, and the FA50 f1.4 has no direct replacement; the 200 and 300 were replaced by DA*, and the DA*55 somewhat occupies the slot vacated by the FA*85.

Now that the K-1 has at long last hit the shelves I would possibly expect the old FA versions superseded by HD D-FA variants with in-lens AF.

It did Peter, this was the Philips 6MP 36x24mm chip pre*istD. A prototype Pentax digital which Pentax didn't proceed with, but Contax did and died.

I think people were told that before:

the SF series appeared
the Z-series appeared
the *istD appeared
the K10D appeared
when Hoya took over
before the K-5 appeared
before the K-3 appeared... and it will still go on..

Credit to Ricoh for bringing out a new product in what is a declining market

Good that you mention that you have those lenses Richard

I've got the 16-50 and the 300 (+1.4) with my Pentax system, with Nikon I've got the AF-S 300 f4d and to be honest I find no noticeable difference between the 2 systems in terms of focussing speed - if you need faster the new Nikkor lens is double the price of the old f4 - but in terms of sharpness the DA* has the mojo

The D7100 was bought to accompany the D3, if you want a peer for the D3 then you have to pay £5000+ for the camera and accept that any lens purchase adds £1600 a time to get the best out of it; there are things the D7100 is good at (I have not scrimped on the lenses) but buffer is one bugbear and the other is, believe or not, the flash system - how it works is a mystery known only to Nikon techs (simply just do NOT turn onto auto) and the bloody flashes overheat - I've been stuck waiting for an SB-900 to COOL down in Winter...

Put it this way I would not recommend giving up an APS-C Pentax for any other APS-C DSLR. If you've bought into Canikon, then the 7D2 and D500 are plausible alternatives....the D7100 will make way for a D500 but my other half has a 7D2 and it is a hateful piece of junk. You are wasting your money going for D7*000 or EOS *0D..

I have the D7100 and a K-3, the D7200 was a slight upgrade on the D7100 (larger buffer, a HUGE bugbear of the D7100 - what is most irritating, catching focus and then running out of buffer after 5 shots - and improved processing/AF). Once the K-3 catches focus you can take 20+ shots before the camera slows down, and allows you to start taking again once the buffer starts to clear. My D7100 or D3 have to clear fully before I am allowed to start taking again.

You can't judge the images in a shop, the LCD really doesn't tell you much about the image being recorded. The Nikon JPEGS may have some sharpening applied whereas Pentax JPEGS appear softer.

Pentax is more intuitive in my opinion.

So cheap K-1s on the classified on Thursday

I'll have 5 at that price

Fantastic!