Maybe just a couple of small points - the screw mount lenses are usually referred to as S lenses. They are called Takumar, Super Takumar, and so on but I have not seen them described as T lenses.

There is no aperture ring on the DA lenses. The *ist film body was the first to use lenses without aperture rings (the FA-J series) and that continues into the *istD and *istDS digital bodies. The DA lenses I have seen are all without the ring. I don't think they'll go back to aperture rings, if only because it may well add expense to the manufacturing process.

K bodies are the first bayonet Pentaxes, and are KM, KX and K2. Lenses are SMC Pentax

M bodies are the more compact range MX, ME, ME Super, ME-F, MV, MV-1, MG and mount-wise the LX as well. The lenses are more compact and labelled SMC Pentax-M

A bodies are Super A, Program A, etc., and mount wise can include the P30 and P50 series as well. The lenses have electrical contacts to enable the camera to control the aperture. These will work fully on autofocus bodies as well and are labelled SMC Pentax-A

Then we move onto the autofocus mount, which you can pretty safely assume will be 100% compatible with all the autofocus bodies.

All Pentax autofocus lenses will work fine with all Pentax autofocus bodies, old and new.

The Ricoh lenses have been obliquely mentioned - these can jam onto pentax bodies, despite being an almost identical mount. There would be no problem presumably with K and M series bodies, as there are no contacts on the mount, but for A series and later the advice from Pentax to stick to Pentax lenses is a good one.

If you look over this forum, you will find plenty of posts discussing problems with other makes of lens.

If you buy Pentax lenses you will avoid these problems, and get better quality as well.

If you did manage to do this and the replacement was even a fraction out, you would focus incorrectly ever afterwards, so it's not a good idea. Dirt in the viewfinder system will not affect the image on the film, but you could send the camera for professional cleaning if you wished.

I'd live with it if I could!

With some lenses, primarily macros or long telephotos, the amount of focusing movement between infinity and the closest focus can be quite large. If a lens used all of the focusing range it could work quite hard, so a focusing limiter will confine the focusing range as indicated on a dial on the lens. This will make focusing over a smaller range of distances quicker and less of a load on the focusing system.

Sue and I have just come back from the NEC Focus on Imaging show.

We would have liked to handle the *istD ans negotiate a price but Pentax were nowhere to be seen. This was a huge show - why weren't you there?

Personally, I think this was a big mistake. You need to be seen to make the running in this very competitive world.

We are disappointed.

Mainly the healing and patch tools and maybe quick mask? There's a lot in 7 that most will never use, it being a professional tool for repro houses, publishers and so on.

7 does offer quite a few other things and, apart from the cost I guess we would prefer to use 7.

It's now fairly easy to find a nice SMC Pentax-M 50mm f1.7 for around £20, and that is an excellent lens. The 50mm f2 should be cheaper and is pretty much as good. The 50mm f1.4 sacrifices absolute resolution for contrast, and for the low light reportage it might be used for then that is arguably the right choice. The 50mm f1.2 controls flare and coma extremely well, rendering light sources correctly even at full aperture, whilst giving good performance stopped down.

Finally, you might consider the 50mm f4 and 50mm f2.8 Macro lenses, which, although more expensive, will be very, very useful.

The concept of the "budget lens" does seem to be a relatively new one - in the days on M and A series lenses there were no real distinctions between the performance levels of the lenses in a range - I suppose the first "budget" Pentaxes were the bayonet Takumar series.

I can vouch for the 24-90mm, which is a cut above the basic zooms in the range. I have also tried the 28-70mm f4 AL, which is pretty good as well. Of course, KIm, your 28-70mm f2.8 is a different kind of beast! If I could justify the cost of that, then that would indeed be a lens of choice.

Independent lenses have always been a disappointment either mechanically or optically and although there will no doubt be good ones I tend to avoid them. In any event, they tend to focus or have aperture rings that turn the wrong way and that causes confusion in practice.

42mm screw fit.