Thankfully there's no such thing as a body specific lens in the Pentax system, unless you count the System 10 lenses for the Auto 110. The SMC-AF 35-70 F2.8 could be called body specific but even that will work on cameras other than the ME-F it was intended for, just not auto focus.

Even the DA's will mount and fire quite happily on anything with P, Tv or body centric aperture control (so almost anything after the A series bodies to some extent or another), although there will be a certain amount of vignetting with most of them in at least part of the range.

I have used an FA-80-320 (circa 1999) on a K1000 (circa 1975) on a number of occasions with very pleasing results.

As with most communities I find 99+% of Ebay members are honest, decent people and dealing with them is a pleasure. I've had several very pleasent chats over a pint in the local pub while checking over an item before money changes hands.

It's the minority who give it a bad name.

one of my ex-housemates used to sneer at me for being able to tell more or less the entire m-series apart just based on their focus rings and front element sizes, until he realised how much of a bargain you can get if the person trying to sell the kit doesn't have a clue.

Thought so.

I'd like to see a return to proper metal bodies, when I compare the size of a modern DSLR to an MX it makes me wonder just what is taking up all that space?

After all my E50 has several shooting modes, 7meg sensor batteries and a screen, but it's a fraction of the size of my K110d.

Maybe the K-m is going the right way for size.[/quote]it is our beloved K mount which sets the minimum thickness for a DSLR as Matt suggested. Personally I'd rather it be a bit on the bulky side and have a K mount than Auto 110 sized and loose the backward compatibility.

The ones which amaze me are the 4/3rds cameras. They ditched their old mount and therefore had more or less free reign to make the new system dinky, even went to a piddly little 2x sensor and yet their cameras are no smaller than a DL (at least not significantly).

you can't anodise plastic, since plastic does not conduct electricity and therefore cannot behave as the anode in an electric circuit.

I totally agree with your second point though, within reason I don't care what colour my camera is but I'd like it to be the same colour it started as after 10,000+ frames.

The DA 55-300 is the best lens in that price range hands down. The Sigma and Tamron lenses are cheaper however, so deppending on what else you want to spend your money on they may still be worthy of consideration.

Personally I don't think the price difference between the Sigma APO and the Pentax DA is enough to make the Sigma a contender, but the Tamron 70-300 is very cheap and very good value, though it does reportedly suffer from chromatic aberation.


In your shoes, I'd take the Pentax DA 55-300, possibly the Tamron if there was something very specific I wanted to spend the other £89 on.

I think I once had a cheap CF card fail in my Pentax EI-100, but so far the worst that has happened to me with SD is the write protect tab fell off a Sandisk Ultra II, making it permanantly read only. 7Dayshop offered to replace it, but I decided to repair it with a strategic blob of super glue and it still works fine to this day.

of course certain camera brands oversharpen in camera so....

I don't have the 40mm pancake, but I have been known to use M series lenses on my DSLRs. If the lens is good enough to justify the faf, the stop down metering is easy to get used to. You do have to learn the lens though, as K** series metering doesn't work quite properly with them and you have to mentally apply a correction to the metering.

I originally bought Dads for £50, a little tainted as it turned out to be broken. I always planned to get it fixed and it languished in a box for a year before Dad sort of adopted it. We have tried and failed to find anyone who can fix it, no one can get the parts, but it actually works pretty well as it is provided you don't want to do 1:1 work.