How about removing and uninstalling the card reader, then reattaching it and letting it re-install? It may not even need the installation CD and it could solve the problem.

There are a few 12-24mm f4 lenses, including Nikon, and it looks like it could be a popular offering. Maybe one lens manufacturrt has designed it and sold the rights to several companies to produce, maybe one manufactrur makes and sells the basic component.

And maybe not, but how would we ever know?

They can be, George. I only use filters where necessary these days, and with digital cameras that's not much!

Mainly down to Tri-X and a red filter for film....

My preference is for the Pentax SMC filters or the delightfully heavy B&W in their brass mounts.

Coating and multicoating is to prevent reflected light from bouncing around inside the lens and causing flare and loss of contrast. An uncoated four element lens might lose 35% of its light transmission in this way. This is reduced to well under 5% with multicoating, even in the most complex zoom lenses.

Multicoating is one of the major factors making lenses with large numbers of elements possible.

The fungus spores were presumably already in the air, which is how they got into your lens, and I'm not sure I'd want a source of contamination near my other photographic gear, especially not in the confined environment of a camera bag....Personally I would dispose of the lens just in case. If there is a risk and it spreads to your other gear it could be a very expensive way to find out.

Yes, but has the poster actually tested the two lenses properly (a complex and time consuming thing to do) or is it just an opinion just like you might hear "Down at the pub"?

Take advice carefully....

My point was that the 18-55 supplied with the camera costs so little that you might as well have it. It is slightly soft wide open, but crisps up nicely when stopped down and gives creditably little chromatic abberation. For what it's worth, it also has aspherical elements. It's a good performer, not as good as the more expensive options, but then we wouldn't expect it to be.

Hope that helps!

KA is a manual focus lens with A setting
KAF is autofocus mount
KAF2 is autofocus mount with power zoom compatibility.

All these are fully compatible with the *istDS, so all your lenses should be fine.

However, the 18-55mm Pentax lens bundled with the *istDS is a very nice lens indeed, and for the small extra price is well worth buying anyway.

Lenses with a "A" setting will enable use of all exposure modes.

Pre-A lenses can still use metering, but in manual stop-down mode.

Screw fit lenses, if put into M setting which stops down the lens to whatever aperture is set, will work very happily in aperture priority mode, but of course the viewfinder image will darken as you stop down. So you focus wide open and then stop down with a quick twist of the aperture ring - pretty convenient.

K and M lenses only allow Aperture priority at open aperture. You need to use manual metering for these.

Both PENTAX USER and BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY have announced the *istDS2 as though it will be available in the UK. Has there been a change of plan by Pentax?

Well, all the things I was thinking of are ruled out by what you say, so I guess it's a repair job unless someone else has any ideas.

If the problem doesn't occur at lower ISO settings at least you can carry on shooting for now.