The supply situation has been a bit of a problem, although to be faiur Nikon and Canon have both had their own issues.

I've just had to be patient (not easy!) and I waited several months for my 12-24mm...

Posting it here would not be good because of the copyright issues - we can't just lift and display other people's property without permission.

Don't dispute any of that for a moment, George. I was just thinking that he did a fair job and he did try to cover all bases. He's not a Pentax specialist, but I think he did better than Ivor Matanle did when covering older ranges.

The AF500FTZ is of course compatible to the extent it could be used, we just don't get all the functions available. The same goes for the ring flash, which works happily in manual mode. I'm not a flash fan, so it's not a big deal for me.

The lens roadmap is a good point - there's plenty to come. But for the amateur there's probably enough already. I have a 12-24, 16-45, 18-55, 50-200 and an older 100mm macro. What else would I need unless for a specific purpose. Oh, OK, the fish-eye zoom would be nice!

I think to be fair to Damien Demolder, he has been doing this test under the spotlight of Pentax Users everywhere and has done his very best to cover all the points he was asked to on the AP forum, and maybe he has looked in here as well - I certainly sent him the link.

I read the test and it seems to be a thorough review indeed, as much as anyone could expect.

McKeowan's Price Guide to Antique and Classic Cameras. HC £100 PB £90.

This covers all the manual focus stuff at least.

Otherwise, a copy of AP will give you a pretty good idea and a look on eBay will clinch it!

The SMC Pentax D-FA 100mm f2.8 Macro lens is a beautiful lens and at a lower price than an independent lens I would say there is no choice to be made. The pentax engineering is gotrgeous, the lens handles like a dream and the results are fantastic.

We use the SMC Pentax-FA 100mm f2.8 Macro, and that is a superb lens as well, as mentioned, although somewhat bigger and heavier.

The link wouldn't work, do you know which Pentax macro lens it is?

The K10D has the 10.2MP sensor as opposed to the 6.1MP of the K100D. As the CCDs are the same dimensions it's obvious that the K10D pixel sites will be smaller. Therefore they will generate less current and will need more amplification. This is why the 10.2MP sensor will be inherently noisier and therefore a lower speed setting (100 ISO) is provided, and equally well why the 3200 ISO top setting has been dropped.

I was quite happy with the *istDS noise levels at 200 ISO and am also using the K10D at 200 ISO. Noise does not seem to be a problem at this speed.

If you consider that I always used to use fast films with their resultant grain (especially Kodak Tri-X) then I am unlikley to be worried by the low noise levels at moderate ISO speeds. Those who did not use the Panatomic-X (32 ISO) type films in days of yore and who think that digital SLRs have noise problems may have already forgotten how much grain they used to accept as OK!

Digital images are clean and sharp, quite unlike film, until we get to higher ISO settings of maybe 800 or above.

Have you set the camera to focus on the centre spot only? If not, then doing so will probably help considerably.

Occasionally all AF systems will be defeated, but I have not experienced the sort of problems you mention and I have been using the same lenses.

There are lots of sharpening techniques, but USM is actually pretty good if you get the values right.

Sharpening the lightness channel in Lab mode also works well.

Generally I'm not too fond of the more complex techniques.