I understand, perhaps I don't experience this as a problem because I'm still stood behind the camera, so it's in shadow anyway.

On the face of it, to have so long and exposure in light bright enough to cause a problem, seems like quite an extreme situation, so is this happening when very dark ND filters are being used?

Light leakage in cameras has always existed, but usually the exposure is so short it's not obvious and usually it affects the metering more than anything else. I would have expected the flipped up mirror to seal off any leakage from the prism area.

Does nobody use the Eyepiece M designed for the purpose?

It's also worth noting that if we use the 2 second delayed action, not only is the mirror locked up before exposure (reducung vibration) but also the exposure is locked, so at that point we can take our eye away from the viewfinder.

It depends on how you work, but the essential thing is that the back element and contacts are protected and the front element doesn't get scratched in the bag.

In practice, under wedding shoot conditions, hoods stay on and back caps are always used. In slower shooting where lenses are not changed much, front and back caps are always used.

I don't keep replacing the lens cap after every shot though, that would I think be overkill...

The classic portrait lens on film would be 85mm (so the equivalent would be the SMC Pentax-DA* 55mm f1.4) to 105mm (Equivalent would be SMC Pentax-DA 70mm f2.4 Limited) but some prefer 120mm (equivalent would be SMC Pentax-FA 77mm f1.8 Limited).

I used to use the 100mm on film but currently have the 77mm, but I am seriously thinking of selling that and buying the 70mm instead. It doesn't sound a lot of difference, but the shorter lens suits me slightly better and I would be back to the field of view of the 100mm lenses that I used to like very much.

I would start off by setting the image tone to Natural. This should lower the contrast a little and make things look better. IMHO Bright is too bright, and Vivid is just off the scale!

Exposures of average subjects should be fine with matrix or centre weighted metering, but leave spot metering unbtil the camera is understood better.

Starting with images that don't contain lots of sky would be good, but also look at the way your subject is lit and make sure some light is actually falling on it, not coming from behind it. Photography is all about light.

Classified Ads isn't the place for discussions on servicing, so as most of this thread is nothing to do with the sale I'll move it to Lenses.

The best thing is to just give them a call in the morning and see what can be sorted out.

What an impossible question...the one I need to be using at the time!

I suspect a lot of the time though I will be using the 18-135mm, which I rather like.

There's a lot to like about the 24-90mm, but I found in the end that it was an awkward range on digital. Quite a bit of my shooting is from, say, 18mm-45mm, so the idea I had of using the 12-24mm and 24-90mm led to a lot of lens changing.

On film, the 24-90mm was superb.

Title corrected.