I have used a lot of different makes of lens, and would have saved a fortune if I'd stayed with pentax right from the start. With a few exceptions, I do not believe from my own experience that independent lenses are either made as well or perform as well as the pentax ones.

There is another good reason for sticking to Pentax lenses - all the aperture rings turn the same way and all the focusing rings do as well. This means better ergonomics and consistency when changing from lens to lens. Also, the Pentax range has more or less the same colour balance across the lenses - some independent lenses will be cooler and others warmer in colour rendition.

My advice would be stick to Pentax and enjoy the results!

You can happily use K fit and M series lenses in aperture priority mode as well as manual.

Pentax DSLRs are proving to be superb and reliable, I certainly would buy with confidence.

Equally, whilst there may be some common faults in compact digital cameras, we only hear about the ones that go wrong and not the thousands that are perfectly fine. Problems equally apply to all makes, and there are lots of people suffering for instance faulty CCDs from one major DSLR manufacturer (not Pentax!)....

Sadly nothing manufactured by anyone is totally free from the potential to fail.

It looks like you have a Model I version of the lens - it is the Model II version that has the dot instead of the 2.

The rear element of your lens will protude slightly and should not be used with any pre-Spotmatic cameras unless they have the newer crescent shaped push plate at the bottom of the mirror box. Suitable cameras usually have 7 digit serial numbers and an orange "R" on the rewind crank. Bodies that should be checked are s1a, H1a, SV or H3v.

Your lens has 8 elements in 7 groups and would appear to be genuine!

If you take your picture in RGB then you retain the possibility of applying filter effects that simulate coloured filters on b/w. Most of my b/w digital images start as RGB files.

In the Epson printer driver there is an option to PhotoEnhance, one of which is sepia. This is a fantastically easy way to do sepia toning effects and it just happens to be exactly the colour I prefer!

Photoshop is actually quite versatile in producing monochrome images.

When you press the shutter are the LEDs in the viewfinder active?

To check if the shutter is opening and closing, open the camera back (without a film in!) and fire the shutter. You will be able to see what is happening.

If you go to www.ebay.co.uk and search for "LX Grip B" or similar you may or may not find one there, but if you add the search to your favourites list you can opt to receive an e-mail whenever such an item appears. This works very well and it stops you missing the item you want.

This is a tough one to answer, not least as the market is turning to digital photography.

I would suggest you buy a copy of AMATEUR PHTOTGRAPHER and explore the second hand prices in there. Your private sale price should be a little lower than a shop price, but it will be much higher than a shop's buy-in price.

Alternatively you could have a look at eBay and see what auction prices are being realised. This could also use eBay to make your sale and you might get a good result.

I guess it depends on what I'm trying to achieve at any one time, but I do have a soft spot for my SMC Pentax-M 20mm f4, usually with a nice red filter sitting on the front. The film will be Kodak Tri-X developed in Paterson FX-39 and printed onto Agfa Premium Multicontrast paper.

Lovely!

Thanks for that, George, that's exactly what I was suggesting!