It depends on the lens. There is always a high demand for the rarer lenses or for those that happen to be the current fashion.

I'll drop you a PM Michael.

Our last film camera purchase was the *ist...sadly it has now developed a fault and is unrepairable due to a lack of parts. Everyhthing is in as-new condition, but the second pressure on the shutter release does not release the shutter.

I am told by both Harrow Technical and Asahi Photo that this is a component failure, and there are no parts.

I only mention it as it's something to be aware of when looking at eBay purchases. Some of these cameras are quite old now and unless they were very successful there may be few parts to be had. One of the earlier models might well be a better bet as the *ist was not around long before the digital revolution really hit home.

Here's one from EPZ:

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/pentax-q-compact-system-camera-review-17429

Any lens of a given focal length (let's say 50mm as an example) has the same DOF, regardless of format.

However, a 50mm lens on 67 is a wide angle, but on APS-C is a moderate telephoto. So on APS-C, when comparing it in this example to medium format, the smaller format has a telephoto lens with the same DOF as a wide angle lens.

Smaller formats have more DOF because of that. We can complicate matters by going into more detail, but it doesn't change the practical effect as described.

Another extreme example is the Minox sub-miniature "spy camera", which has a 15mm lens with so much DOF for that format that everything is in focus from 9 inches to infinity at f3.5

Life is tough...I'm aspiring to one of those nice red ones, but I shall probably never own one. Mind you, one decent lottery win and the first thing on the list won't be a problem.

When we had film, bigger format gives better quality was a fairly straightforward relationship. I never found the jump from 35mm to 645 to be quite enough, but the jump from 35mm to 6x7cm is very obvious. Hence I aspired to the Pentax 67, but never actually got to own one. The viewfinders are incredible by the way.

With digital, there's a lot of after-capture skill needed to get the absolutely best results, so investment in that area - computers, printers, scanners, Photoshop.....- is probably more helpful than changing format. Unfortunately it's also very mundane as purchases go, when we might prefer buying lenses and cameras.

In the end almost certainly it's more the person behind the camera that matters most, not the camera itself.

Ratings systems are open to abuse, but often I've been looking in the PU Gallery and my finger has been itching to click a "Like" button. It's maybe got nothing in the image I particularly want to comment on, just would be words for the sake of it, but it would be great to be able to click a thumbs up.

The idea has been mooted several times, but it's still under consideration. The EPZ system also works quite well, although it looks like "buddy groups" evolve, sometimes giving images huge numbers of undeserved votes whilst other languish with very few but can be really excellent images.

Personally I still like voting systems though, imperfect though they may be.

There's some potential in that idea and it could be fun. Coloured camera bodies seem to be the in thing as well.

That was quick off the mark, someone has seen an opportunity!