Frank,
The DA series are great - but may not cover all your needs, or may be more expensive when there are second hand alternatives.

e.g. the SMC-F and SMC-FA 50mm/f1.4 - there's no DA equivalent

THE site for history and specs is:
http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/index.html

Definitely worth checking out
Matt

Just to expand on John's list:

SMC-F - original AF. Thin, ridged focus ring.

SMC-FA - updated AF. Some overlap with the SMC-F series. The focus ring is larger and rubberised.

SMC-FAJ - AF without aperture ring. The DSLRs and the newer film bodies work better without using the aperture ring. These bodies have what's been called a "crippled mount" - as the older style K mount had a mechanical finger that could sense where the aperture ring was set to. A point to note about these lenses - you cannot use them on manual extension tubes or bellows (but they will work on extension tubes that have electrical contacts).

SMC-D-FA - the newest macro lenses work on both film and digital cameras, but they have been optimised for digital. These lenses have an aperture ring.

SMC-DA - only digital, no aperture ring. Same restrictions as the SMC-FAJ series. The SMC-DA have quick-shift focus rings. The camera can autofocus and you can immediately override the AF by moving the focus ring.

Hope that helps too!
Matt

Sorry, but I beg to differ... slightly

When you move the directory on the card gets updated after each file is pulled off. As we are talking NAND flash, that means that the PC has to rewrite the sector onto another NAND flash page each time. You see NAND flash has blocks that are divided into pages. The pages are usually 512 or 2048 bytes (plus some extra bytes for error correction etc). You can write to a page, but you can't erase it - you can only erase the whole block (of 2k or 128k).

Consequently, although it may be more convenient to move the files from the card to the PC (and perhaps faster with a USB2 reader), you are actually causing pages to be written to more than they need to.

A format, on the other hand, isn't the same as a hard disk format. This erases the used blocks, and rebuilds a fresh directory structure. That's why it only takes a second or two in camera.

Just bear in mind that NAND flash has a physical erase limit of between 100k - 1M erases, and then the block is dead. But then, that's a LOT of photos and card transfers

Matt

So they're business analysts as well as photography experts?

Sounds more like brand prejudice to me

PygmyTwittle,

Just one small fly in the ointment, as it were, is that Manual mode fixes the ISO... at least it does on the *ist-D. You can't have Manual and Auto ISO. In fact, you can't even have exposure compensation and auto ISO - as soon as you enable compensation then the ISO is fixed.

I'll wait and see the K10D before passing any more judgments

Matt

Erm... the links don't view now Liam
Matt

John,
If it weren't for computers... I wouldn't be able to afford my Pentax gear
(Though as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt! LOL! )
Matt

Liam,
No problem! Computers, eh?

Matt

Liam,
Just being picky... your diagram should say "Focal distance", not "Hyperfocal distance"
i.e. the "Focal Length"
Matt

Mac,
According to Bojidar Dimitrov, it's one of two:

http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/lenses/primes/short-tele/M100f4-Macro.html
http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/lenses/primes/short-tele/M100f4-Dental_Macro.html

And yes, both are max mag of 0.5x

(The AF 100mms are 1:1 - SMC-F, SMC-FA, SMC-DFA)

Hope that helps!
Matt