First, welcome to the forum and I'm glad you've already found it interesting and helpful.

Wide range zooms do mean compromises in design. You don't get something for nothing in lens design, any more than in anything else.

If I had bought the K100D, for the small additional cost I would have had the 18-55mm Pentax lens as well.

However, as an additional buy I don't think that's good value. So I would suggest the 16-45mm and 50-200 Pentax lenses would be the way to go now.

In terms of ergonomics, quality and convenience I would thoroughly recommend the Pentax lenses, and that is all that I buy.

Hope that helps!

A considerable amount of extra information will be retained. Whether this can be translated into better prints I don't know. Printers may not be able to reproduce the subtelty yet, but they will in the future.

Current A/D conversion is 12 bit I think, unless someone else can correct me on that.

It is possible to work in PS in 16 bit, but I never do.

I think the pentaprism does make a significant difference but it is true that Pentax viewfinders are excellent anyway. To appreciate this we only need to compare them with the dismal efforts from some other manufactrers.

Ah, well, I guess we'll find out soon (or not so soon) enough...I don't know yet whether I'm that excited about SR, but I'll give it a chance.

I'm much more excited about the 10.2MP, the 22 bit A/D conversion, the Pentaprism viewfinder....

I'm going to guess that the more shake reduction the greater the battery drain. And also that wide angle lenses will need less that long telephotos.

Your camera has the original K mount with no elctronic contacts.

The short answer is you can use any Pentax bayonet fit lens, manual or auto-focus although obviously only in manual focus mode.

The exceptions are the very recent FA-J and DA lenses which have no aperture rings.

So in manual focus use:
SMC Pentax
SMC Pentax-M
SMC Pentax-A

AF lenses:
SMC Pentax-F
SMC Pentax-FA
SMC Pentax-D FA

Not suitable:
SMC Pentax FA-J
SMC Pentax-DA

Hope that clears that up!

Any of the Pentax lenses in the focal lengths you list will give you good results, but some are superb. A personal favourite is the SMC Pentax-M 100mm f2.8.

Trust your eyes! Or at least trust them if the dioptre adjustment on the viewfinder has been set correctly....

Not quite, we have a moderate stock in our refridgerator.

Glad to hear you are getting stunning results - have fun!

There is an early K series 24mm f3.5 and a later K series 24mm f2.8. This latter lens was quite compact, almost but not quite an M lens. In fact there never was an M series 24mm, the line went straight to the SMC Pentax-A 24mm f2.8

It's a good lens and will work very well.

However, I would consider the 24mm, which gives a significantly wider field of view.

It depends on your photographic style though.