You can insure photographic equipment under the "All Risks" section of a Household Contents policy, but if the item exceeds a particular value (maybe £500) then you might have to register it specifically with the insurers and pay a suitable premium.

I have found that this approach can be less expensive than specialised Photographic Insurance.

When my 12-24mm arrives I will not be putting a filter on it, any more than I did with my SMC Pentax 15mm f3.5 (nor could I on that!) but the point I'm making is that it's very unlikely to get damaged and why spoil the optical construction with an extra piece of unecessary glass?

I would suggest insuring it instead, maybe under the All Risks section of your household policy.

The enjoy the lens with a clear conscience!

The major difference between your MX and the leica is that the leica has no "flipping mirror" so the only sound you hear is the shutter. This has always been cited as an advantage of rangefinders, but they have such dreadful viewfinders I can't get on with them at all.

Give me the SLR any day. (As long as it's not anearly 1900s half plate SLR.....)

Mine has a "ping" noise at the end of the exposure cycle. It's just a different sort of shutter than the ME series and the sound will be different.

The MX uses a mechanical, horizontally running rubberised silk shutter. The ME series use variations on the Seiko electronic vertically running metal shutter.

That's very true. A good MX would be fine, if you can find one, but you are more likely to find a good MZ5, MZ5n or even MZ3.

Maybe it will. Frankly, I agree with your choice. I find composing a picture through a SLR much much easier than through a rangefinder's viewfinder. In terms of speed of operation as well, the pentax SLRs beat the leica every time for me.

I was lent a leica M3 outfit a while ago, and I absolutely hated it.

The other possible reason for under-exposure with the ME derivatives is poor battery contact. If the power fails the shuttere fires at 1/2000 sec, and will almost certainly mean under-exposure!

The MX is a totally different beast, being the same specification as the Spotmatic but in a much more compact form and with better GPD based metering. It is fully manual and only needs batteries for the meter. The batteries will easily last a year of even quite intense use - a revelation for digital users who spend their lives recharging....

But the two camera types are totally different in comcept. If you need the electronic-shutter auto exposure then the MX is not like that. But it is robust and reliable, providing you can find a good one. With mechanical shutters the faster speeds may be slow by now, so an overhaul would be a good idea. After that, you have a terrfic camera.

Ina manner of speaking. You could always use the red channel and greyscale it - this eliminates almost all skin defects.

Lateral thinking....The alternative is to supply free tubes of Clearasil.

Does nobody object to you using powerful flashes when they are trying to compete?

I think I would go for a high ISO setting and available light to avoid upsetting the competitiors and the audience.

The 16-45mm is a very fine lens and I use it pretty much all the time.

The 20-35mm I have never used, but I don't think it's wide enough for digital and it might not be quite as good because it was not designed with digital in mind. There may well be a definite advantage to using digital lenses on the DSLRs.