My view is that all macro lenses are superb, almost without exception. It is the nature of the beast.

The difference will lie in the Pentax being ergonomically superior, the lens transmission giving images with the same colour balance to the rest of the range, the build quality being better, and the lens being more compact than most.

I have both the FA and D-FA 100mm f2.8 macro lenses and they are difficult to tell apart in practice. The FA is much heavier of course, being a solid lump of metal and glass. The Quick Shift feature of the the D-FA scores with me as a huge advantage.

At the moment I am undecided whether to sell on the lens from Currys if and when it arrives, or keep that and sell the FA. Sue and I both use the macro lenses, so we do need two of them. We don't need three though...

I think if you wait too long the moment will pass.

The K7 has the advantage of weather sealing, as you are aware, and coupled with the WR lenses frees us to make photographs in rain, snow, dusty environments, etc. I would still be inclined to protect it against sand though, as the abrasive qualities will wear the surface and damage the exposed lens glass even if the sand does not penetrate inside.

Better to have a K7 you use than a K-m you don't. The sale of the K-m will also help to offset the cost of the K7 kit.

There's nothing else as rugged and as versatile for anything like the current price.

You focus using AF, hold the setting using a half press on the shutter release and then tweak manually. If you release the half press the lens will of course refocus itself.

A link would be useful.

The quality of the zooms is so good that the primes are not that much different. Primes are, however, generally faster than zooms and this can be useful in some circumstances.

For flower pictures the 50-200mm and 50-300mm are excellent, but then so is the 100mm Macro. I think both these would be more practical than a 70mm f2.4 that you probably won't ever use at f2.4. The 100mm Macro is better, but it's by a modest margin. However, for close focusing it can't be beaten.

The 70mm f2.4 won't add any new focal lengths to your kit, so why not look at the things you don't have?

You don't have a Macro lens, and the 100mm is probably the most useful of these.

You don't have an ultra-wide, so the 12-24mm may be the one for you.

Specialist lenses could be the 10-17mm Fisheye, or maybe you fancy extending your 50-200mm by replacing it with the 50-300mm.

The DA has a metal mount, comes with lenshood included and also has QuickShift - the ability to use manual focus whilst still set to AF.

The DAL is the same optically, but no lens hood, no QickShift and a plastic mount.

The lens hood and Quick Shift are worth the extra IMHO, but if funds are limited then buy a generic lens hood to go with the DAL version.

Fair question, and it didn't. To clarify, I was posting an explanation for two removed posts that were not germane to the thread. Next time I will make it clearer, as it stands it's only clear to those whose posts were removed and anyone who happened to see them before I did.

Many thanks for pointing it out, although the better way is by PM, as we've now cluttered a for sale thread up a bit more!

Please resist hijacking for sale threads, many thanks.