If I could have just one lens it would be a DA 55-300, no question at all.

I would occasionally miss wide angle, but my K10D has my current FA80-320 on it about 80% of the time and a 90mm macro about 10%. The DA 55-300 focusses close enough to cover most of the "macro" shots I do, albeit not quite as well as a true macro lens, and it goes a bit wider than the 80-320 so I reckon it would very rarely disappoint me.

you do have to be prepared for the eventuality that it may sell ludicrously low though. Most things do bid up to a "sensible" price, but once in a while some lucky person gets a bargain, and some other unlucky person cries.

when I bought my DL2 and later my K10D I had read the manual from cover to cover by the time the batteries were fully charged. Ever since I was a young boy, I've always used reading the manual as a way to "play with" a new toy/game/etc before I can actually do so.

I'm afraid I simply don't believe that an EVF will equal an optical viewfinder (even a Pentamirror one) in the foreseeable future.

The pixels are going to need to get a couple of orders of magnitude smaller and the refresh times a couple of orders faster, all this while making the image brighter.

I'm a great believer in technology, and I believe it will happen eventually, but if eventually is this side of 2050 I'll be very impressed

(I stand ready to be impressed, come on Pentax, Samsung, Oly, Panasonic, I dare you to impress me if you can!!)

what phone have you got gartmore? I've never yet seen a result from a camera phone which I would upload to facebook much less print, if someone has managed to build one which works as both a passable camera and a phone I'll try and get one next time I get an upgrade.

not impossible, just time consuming since the camera will always take a dark frame the same length as the original exposure.

I find it really disappointing because the K20D's sensor (on paper at least) is otherwise nearly perfect for astro.

my initial reaction was one of "why on earth would I want that?", but when you consider the image circle of the lens it's almost more a case of "what is the good justification for NOT doing that".

If a 23.5mm square sensor can be made for a reasonable price (and why shouldn't it?) then it seems like a pretty darned good idea.

In fact, taking this to its logical extreme what we want is a circular sensor having a radius of 33mm to truly make full use of the image circle. Of course a circular sensor would incur all sorts of production difficulties so it isn't practical, but you could maybe approximate with an octagon and matching octagonal pixels......


PS my apologies to Viewfinder or whoever it was who mentioned this ages ago, I seem to recall being one of the voices scoffing at this idea and have now totally swapped sides.

I have only two reasons why I wouldn't buy a K200D:

1. I already have a K10D

2. My girlfriend would kill me.

Isn't advertising Jessops second only to telling everyone to jump ship to Sony?

The good news is that there is basically no such thing as a bad macro prime, even the Cosina 100mm F3.5 was optically good, just plastic.

You should be able to pick up something old and manual for under £100 I would have thought, although I haven't looked in a while since I have a Tamron SP 90mm and have no need to look elsewhere until I can afford the DFA 100 F2.8