Thanks, Gwyn, that's very interesting.

We have several phpBB3 forums and if you want to see how they look try the ADAPS one, follow the link at www.adaps.org.uk

Personally I like the style and features of the phpBB forums, but there are others.

That's a fair point - it always depends on the print size.

Having said that, as I tend to add grain to images that I think suit it the noise levels at 800 don't really bother me too much. Better a sharp grainy picture than an unsharp fine-grain one. I like my grain crisp and clear, just like Kodak Tr-X developed in an acutance developer.

The 12-24mm is a rectilinear lens and IMHO has far more uses than the Fisheye 10-17mm, which bends lines as we would expect.

As a general lens the 12-24mm would be my choice - the 10-17mm is really a specialist lens with some practical but mainly crestive appplications.

Yes, I was keeping track of how often I used the 12-24mm at 12mm and then ended up cropping the image.

Most of the uncropped 12mm shots have been very tight interiors where even 12mm was not quite enough.

The 24-90mm is a great lens (just ask Mattmatic!) and mint examples go for maybe £150 on eBay. Is it worth £250? Only you can say.

The pentax 55-300mm is excellent, buy it with confidence.

My boots are in even worse condition, so I daren't show them...

It will all depend on sales. If Canon, Nikon and Sony start to make progress with FF then everyone will have to follow.

That of course has nothing to do with what we need and I guess a K30D in due course will be more than sufficient to make some great images. But then again the K10D can already do that in the right hands.

It's quite right that a lens is focused at just one distance, and only things at that distance are in focus. However, things nearer and further away become progressively out of focus, depending upon the aperture, and the eye cannot distinguish the difference until it exceeds a certain threshold.

This point can be defined as we know the resolution of the eye, so DOF can also be defined. So it isn't quite as vague as suggested, but it's also true that a more exacting standard has to employed for huge enlargements than say for producing 6" x 4" prints.

The one thing I don't agree with is that we should expect different levels of sharpness from different types of lenses. In a practical sense all our lenses should produce equally sharp prints and the differences if any should only become apparent when we start being very picky and examining them from unrealistically close distances! Like camera club judges do...

Absolutely. Many questions have been revisited time and time again and it would be most unreasonable to expect a new poster to check everything that had gone before, just in case it had already been covered. A forum is an area of flux, not a book that has to be written and then set in stone.

Anyway, the second and third times around new and updated information can come to light.

At this time there has actually been wider talk of a FF sensor, and indeed Pentax themselves have raised it as a possible future path. It still probably leaves us a long way from the actual release of such a product, but then again who knows what plans have been in place and for how long.

As for lenses, I should imagine that the idea that we would buy lots of FF lenses having bought lots of DA ones would seem a pretty nice idea to the accountants! The lenses exist anyway, witness the new 200mm which is the same as the last 200mm produced for film, albeit it in a new casing.

Never say never...