Funnily enough, I also just got back (a week ago) from a couple of weeks in Japan.

I went into a few of the big camera shops and Pentax always seemed to have a decent area with pretty much the whole range, cameras and lenses, on display and available in stock. All the display cameras I tried had charged batteries and the security on items allowed swapping to try things out. I did see a few Pentax cameras out and about, including a K3 with a 31mm limited on it. I think that's the only time I've ever seen another limited lens in the wild (on that trip I was shooting mainly with my DA limiteds - 15, 21, 35 and 70).

I was struck by the number of mirrorless users in Japan, especially the Fuji X system (which is wonderful but expensive), Olympus m4/3 (almost never Panasonic) and especially Sony A7s. Fast primes also seemed more common than here in Europe, where I rarely see anything that isn't a kit lens.

While it's very clear that mirrorless is the future of photography, in Japan they seem to embrace that much more than here in Europe, where people still think that for a camera to be good it needs to be BIG.

Processing your own B&W film (as I do) is cheaper than having someone else do it because it's a manual process - it's surprisingly easy to do yourself but can be time-consuming, which is why it's expensive if you pay someone else to do it.

Colour processing is more difficult to do manually but cheaper to have someone else do, because they will run it through a machine. I don't know that you'd save any money processing colour film yourself.

Here in Madrid processing B&W costs at least three times what colour does so I do the B&W myself and take the colour to be done elsewhere.

That looks like a silver K200D, a good choice for sandy conditions as it's weather-sealed. The other guy looks like he's shooting Canon and has no lens hood, so on both counts my guess is that he has no clue what he's doing.

I don't think that an ME Super will have any parts directly connected to, or held in by, the baseplate. You should be able to take it off without any worries.

I shoot film and enjoy it very much, despite it being harder work than digital. I don't agree that the return of film will be short-lived - after the dip people are realising that it can yield very different results from digital, especially when compared to the horribly cranked saturation and contrast average digital photo.

Film has a different look, a different film and is vastly more enjoyable to shoot than digital is. I think it will be around for quite a while yet.

PS - I am quite young (36) but not a hipster, so I regard myself as part of the demographic group that is bringing film back.

Welcome back and I hope you get back into the swing of things!

I don't understand in this day and age why (A) Pentax haven't released new (and properly fixed) versions of all the original SDM lenses and (B) why people keep buying them, especially the 16-50 which from what I read is the real lemon of the SDMs.

Get a Tamron or Sigma instead. They won't be weather sealed but they will work.

I would use ebay to check what the same lens, in similar condition has sold for in the past and then put it up for sale on the forum here.

Sorry, I don't see an asking price anywhere in your post.

Welcome to the forum