I use the 18-135mm for most of my general photography, so I'm sure you won't be disappointed with it.

The weather resistance will be useful I think, but if you can sacrifice that then the Pentax 18-270mm might serve very well as a single lens. I would carry a fast standard lens as well, maybe the plastic but excellent 50mm f/1.8 or the 35mm f/2.4. This is as a light. compact back up in case of a lens failure and it could be useful if the light fails.

Please don't undermine selling threads by pointing people elsewhere. The better way is to drop the OP a PM to advise of any price discrepancy as they will then be able to adjust their price if they so wish.

In the end though, sellers can ask whatever they want for an item. Please make offers by all means.

IIRC there are no clicks because the action is ultrasonic?

In any case it's worth checking in the menu that dust removal is actually switched on. Maybe the update switched it off.

Fair comment. They are still SMC coatings, unless of course there has been a silent upgrade. There is a precedent for that, as some very late Super Takumar lenses were actually Super-Multi-Coated, but not yet labelled as such.

Good looking weevil! Great colour, excellent sharpness. Very nice indeed.

Probably delay ought to be a factor as well. I can imagine if we had to send a lens back to Japan the delay in the warranty repair might be quite long. I could be wrong, but I'd really only want to do that as a last resort.

QuickShift is the only thing missing from those lenses, and it's a shame. And a DC motor of course. I guess that would require a complete redesign and then we'd be debating whether or not they were as good as the originals!

Brian, that's a bit extreme. If I were using a company and found them to be excellent in every respect, rather like SRS, then I wouldn't be seeking reviews of them. If I saw a bad review I would leave the parties concerned to sort it out between themselves. I wouldn't see a whole mass of bad reviews when a company is good.

Now, if I saw another company that regularly received negative comments, then I would approach them with caution. I have dealt with another company where this is so, and found that provided purchases were clear cut and in stock there was no problem. I wouldn't buy a camera body from this other company, but I would buy a lens which is far less likely top pose a problem. In this instance the risk would be low if the price was substantially lower.

In other words, it's a matter of common sense.

There are more images out there now and it seems the three original Limited lenses are firmly in the package and getting a new lease of life.

It always seems a pity though that the images released aren't really great examples of anything, with far too much out of focus foreground and the like. It would be nice to see some really stunning images, which I'm sure we will see eventually, but why not from the start?