The thing is though, it CAN be matched in store provided you happen to have an internet capable mobile phone with you, can get sufficiently good reception to use it in the store and don't mind making an idiot of yourself. That's what makes it so crazily stupid.

The fact that it's a stupid company policy rather than a stupid employee attitude doesn't make it any less stupid. In fact, if the employee was doing on purpose it to protect his upsell target it would at least make sense from somebody's point of view - his.

What I am really looking forward to is the 8-1800mm F/1.4 zoom with selectable 10:1 super macro, tilt/shift, and fish-eye modes. Impossible, you might think, but perfectly feasible I assure you using the advanced nanotechnology Ricoh are no doubt secretly working on as we speak. A billion microscopic nanobots will simply 'rebuild' the lens to the desired configuration in the blink of the eye. I expect it will be out next year and retail for about £250.00.

That's what I was assuming. The Adaptall 2 version would only be available 2nd hand, but it's just as well you clarified!

Okay, let's just say a zoom with a reasonably wide range of focal lengths, or something. A range of focal lengths, shall we say, wide enough to eliminate the need to change lenses in many (but clearly not all) situations. That's the general area I'm driving at here.

Yes, they are. You do not need an adapter of any kind. (Provided you buy the Pentax mount version of the lenses, of course).

And a better quality (but not more expensive) 18-135 WR? Not that anybody has asked for that but hey... WR is one area where I can see the point of a good superzoom. You can't really change lenses in a hurricane.

Clearly, their attitude makes a lot more sense than that of Jessops, not just from a customer service point of view but from a profitability viewpoint also. I mean, Jessops lost out on a sale entirely due to theirs, because it put us off giving them our money and we choose to go elsewhere (about two doors along) rather than faff around unnecessarily.

Perhaps the Jessops employee just didn't want to make the sale because he could tell we weren't the type to be pressured into buying filters, hoods, lens cases, lens pens, and whatever additional accessories they might want to try to push on us. That kind of thing can cause a guy to fall short of his monthly "upsell" target, after all.

Yeah but the sales guy had already established that I did know what the thing cost, because I'd told him so.

Anyway, next time you see somebody in a Jessops store feverishly tapping away on their internet phone whilst the staff stand by and pretend not to find it in the least bit ironic or amusing, you will know what they're up to.

No clearly it is not. I feel like I'm having to write a book entitled "Everything I already said earlier - for idiots".

Indeed, but then language has a nasty little habit of being defined by usage and not by what is technically correct. I'm quite sure a Victorian English teacher would have to send us all to the bottom of the class for a variety of misdemeanors we could barely begin to imagine.

No a guess does not become a fact. Indeed I think you're willfully misinterpreting what I wrote here. I read photography magazines, read photography blogs, and have conversations with other photographers (sometimes in pubs) all the time. So I know that is the terminology people are using right now (observed fact). What I'm guessing is that they will continue to do so in future - hence the use of "will choose" (future tense) in that sentence whilst I used, funnily enough, present tense in the following one.

Certainly, and it's fine to call it one if you take the trouble to put it in context first, that context being medium format. If you just refer to it as a cropped sensor without context (or worse, in the context of 35mm film, which was what we were discussing when it came up earlier in the thread) it's simply misleading.

Not sure why you'd assume that. The FF DSLR users I know use the term the same way as everybody else.