I also use a 7Dayshop battery which I find just as good as the original. I rotate mine in exactly the way John described earlier.

However, John Riley makes a very good point. Lithium Ion is a technology which it is entirely possible to get dangerously wrong, particularly in an attempt to increase capacity. Always buy your batteries from a well known and respected supplier, and personally I would avoid any cheap replacement which claims a significantly higher capacity than the original.


I would add that, unlike Nickel based batteries, Li-Ion batteries like to be kept charged. Actually I think the optimum for long term storage is supposed to be about half charge, but full charge is a lot better than none. Never allow a discharged Li-Ion battery to sit around discharged for longer than you have to.

Li-Ion cells undergo a chemical change when they become dead flat, which would make charging them again dangerous. For this reason all Li-Ion cells include a safety circuit which

1: Cuts the power before the battery is totally drained
and
2: "self destructs" the battery if it ever becomes totally flat (through self discharge from being left "flat" for a long period).

Thankfully since Li-Ion cells have a very slow self discharge rate, you'd probably have to leave them "discharged" for about 6 months to cause trouble, but better safe than sorry.

out of those two I would go for the Tamron,

if a few extra quid can be found, give consideration to the Sigma APO.

Yes and Yes, although the K200d's viewfinder is still the best Pentamirror one in the industry by some margin. Compare it to the alleged finder which Nikon fans on a budget must endure for example.

of course you'll have to find one first. Haven't looked for a while because I'm feeling poor and would just depress myself, but last time I looked you can't get these in PK mount for love nor money.

am I missing something? surely the fact that the DA* is more or less an FA* with bells and whistles and will therefore work on full frame bodies as well as the DSLRs is a good thing?

thats an interesting observation, but not one I can concur with

my K10D does 9 frames at 3FPS before the buffer fills up in either PEF or DNG.

or, in Chris' case, SELL a new one

good point though. It could easily be argued that anything less than the 16-45 F4 is a bad quality combo with the K20D.

certainly true to a great extent, although more elements gives more options for corrections. It also implies a more expensive design which more thought is likely to have gone into. However, when it's a difference of one element in a 12 element lens that probably doesn't hold very true and so your point is probably more important.

As pointed out above, spending £60 on upgrading the kit lens to the same lens with a MKII on it makes no sense at all unless it's stunningly better (which is unlikely), but it is likely to become of interest (to some) in a few months when these lenses come onto the marketplace and people want to know if they should buy the K200D kit or get it body only and source an older lens.

Thanks Chris for your contribution, that at least seems to imply that the MKII will be a better lens optically. I guess they figured that the MKI is already beyond its limits on the 10MP K10D and therefore putting it on a 14MP camera is a bad idea.

did anyone else notice the 18-55 MkII hidden among the really interesting new lenses announced recently?

as far as I can see, it is 5g lighter, has SP coating and is short by one lens element compared to the original version.

I wonder if it will be better, or just cheaper to make? The reduction from 12 to 11 elements makes me think the 18-55 mk I may actually prove to be superior, but this is just a hunch.

someone above suggested that Pentax would need to go FF to get 3rd place behind Canikon.

Last time I checked, Olympus currently hold that spot (on sales figures anyway) and they don't EVEN have an APS-C size sensor.