Interesting.
Presumably, at least in part, it's being built to service the needs of the new Samsung alliance.
Matt

Nearer £200 (about £235 from www.bhphoto.com ). But then there's customs duty and VAT to pay
And by then you may be better off looking for second hand...
Stuff does come up on the regular sites: www.ffordes.co.uk , www.mxv.co.uk , but I can't remember the last time I saw a DA16-45.
Matt

Actually you need 16mm, because the Pentax has a 1.5x angle-of-view-multiplier. 18mm gives you nearer 28mm angle of view

£200 for a second hand 16-45 sounds a good idea
There's always Germany for lenses - http://www.technikdirekt.de/ that'll save you £30 or £40, but then there's ParcelForce to deal with

Matt

The DA16-45 is a stunning lens in all respects. For landscapes in particular I can't match it! Sharpness, contrast, great flare control - it's all there.
(Though the DA12-24 is definitely on my shopping list )
Matt

SPB,
If your Apacer can keep adding to the CD, then it isn't finalised
(Once a CD is finalised, nothing can add to it.)

On the PC you have to tell your burner software that you are continuing a multisession CD and then it should import all the file names for the previous session.

Each session has it's own directory, and if you wish to keep files from an old session, the new session has to have the directory entries pointing back to the previous session(s).

Incidentally, Nero allows you to "rewind" and access any session on the CD, thus retrieving the old data. (www.nero.com)

Hope that helps,
Matt

Well, firstly, most USB flash drives have limited storage (I have a 2Gb card in my *ist-D).

You can get little USB adapters that link two USB devices to do a transfer. But, I think you're better off investing in one of the little hard-disk based card readers devices. They will let you copy the entire CF card to hard disk, and have something like 20Gb storage.

I use a Phototainer / Flashtrax storage device with 40Gb storage which has a built in colour LCD and allows me to view the images.

Alternatively, something like the Jobo GigaOne costs around £99 for 30Gb and just allows a straight copy of the card (with no graphical view of the images). (here: http://www.ephotozineshop.com/photo/flashcards/mass.html?cd=1061114 )

Hope that helps,
Matt

My two screens from China/ebay arrived this morning.

Hmmmm. Not as good as I'd hoped. He's modified them well enough, and the view is fine (even though one is very roughly cut). Autofocus works just fine.

However, there are two main drawbacks:
1. The older screens are seriously dark compared to the laser etched (?) Pentax screens. Something like 2 stops darker. So, the screen that is plain is nice, but is too dark for me.

2. The second screen has a huge split image circle. Fab for low light. However, outside the circle is dark (see point 1), and the metering has gone a bit AWOL. It seems particularly confused by the very clear split image circle, and when it goes wrong it over exposes.

Now, I think they may have their uses, particularly with the older manual focus lenses - and I'll try the split image one with my manual focus Pentax lenses (and it is astonishingly easy to focus accurately with such a large circle). But I think the Pentax screen is staying for sure

Matt

Ofutter,
The *ist-D series have a correspondingly smaller focus screen than the LX and PZ-1 (comapring 35mm to APS-C size).
There's a similar thread here: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2083
Matt

The image file itself contains the date, time, shutter speed, aperture, exposure settings etc etc.

It's contained in the "EXIF" data. Some packages can overlay the date and time onto the JPG image for you. Maybe Irfanview can - it's free.

Matt

(Fernando: and the DA16-45 is positively outstanding )