You could happily use your existing lenses on the ME Super. The adapter effectively turns it into a screw thread camera and you can change lenses in the usual way. Apart from using stop-down metering there aren't any disadvantages really. The lenses you have are already very fine ones.

If buying lenses though you might as well have the SMC Pentax or SMC Pentax-M ones as they will be slightly faster to use and also there will be more adventurous designs available, such as the 50mm f1.2 and the various zooms.

Polarisers are very tricky to use with ultra-wide lenses because the polarisation of light in the sky is not even. Bands of different gegrees of polarisation become visible and it's not a pleasant effect.

The natural vignetting that occurs with lenses as wide as the 12-24mm can be enough to darken skies slightly anyway, so maybe you can save the cost of that filter after all.

It's impossible to be sure without seeing some pictures, but the usual reasons are camera shake and the use of a wide aperture meaning most of the image is outside the area of depth of field.

Using flash removes both these problems and usually shows that the kit is very capable of sharp results.

If outdoor and flash pictures are sharp then technique is the area to think about. Can you post some picyures so we can see what the problem is?

Just insist that the insurers send you a cheque so that you can deal with your preferred supplier. Explain the long relationship you have with SRS or whoever else.

I've not made many claims, but when I have I have always insisted on a cheque.

It's impressive.

My experience with macro lenses has been that generally the longer ones are more universally usefu. So I use the 100mm f2.8 Macro.

For low light you might consider the 50mm f1.4, otherwise I would use zooms for their verstility.

12-24mm, 16-45mm and 55-300mm are all I need and they all work very well indeed.

However, that's for my photography and you might well have different needs, so it's something that needs careful thought. Don't discount the kit lens, which is not at all bad.

I'm not sure if there are any optical differences, but there are clearly mechanical ones as the lenses are different in terms of their outer shells. The obvious difference is that the Pentax has its SMC coating which ensures low flare and cosistent colour balance with other lenses in the range.

It also has the Pentax Quality Control applied and this may or may not be a higher standard.

I thought it was quite good for some discussion about the images to take place. It can take place in these threads without any problem for the judge.

The real prohibition (if we want to call it that) was to stop comments being interspersed with the entries when they were in a forum thread. This did make things difficult.

Personally I didn't mind comments in the gallery under the images because the judge didn't have to read them and they did relate very well to the pictures. I think it could add more life and vitality to the competition and actually improve it.

What does everyone else think?

I'm confident that you will be delighted with your new lens. Have fun!

Extra Low Dispersion Glass for some of the lens elements. It helps reduce abberations in complex lenses.

The 18-250mm is actually quite an impressive lens. Sue now uses one for most of her general photography and the results are excellent. The only disadvantage is the feeble aperture value at the long end.