I would suggest that the Pentax K100D with its matching set of 3 pancake primes would be the best choice for someone wanting small and light. Olympus make a lot of noise about the size of their body, but they don't have the lenses to back it up.

what telescope do you have? My Dad and I have had considerable success with a DL2 on his Celestron C8N. If the scope is large enough to have a 2" eyepiece adapter, it may well be very easy. All we need to mate the DL2 to the C8N is a K mount to T ring converter, and as far as I can see all the larger Celestron and Skywatcher focusers are the same

actually I thought the K10D held its price quite well, it didn't really budge from the £600 I paid for mine for several months. Granted it has now tumbled somewhat, but in these days of electronics which are out of date before they hit the shops, it did pretty well.

I'm definitely with George, I really can't imagine what K20D can possibly offer which will make me buy one. The K10 is just too close to perfect

Unlocker, when you have been around here a little longer you will get used to Ben and his teasing. He is party to more information than the rest of us and drops hints where he can. Some people are annoyed by his enforced vagueness, but I think it adds to the fun.

For my part, I hope the K20D doesn't exceed my expectations by far. This is because I love my K10D to bits and don't want to replace it!

you guys are sure there WAS a July 95 issue right?

afraid it pre-dates my love affair with the SLR by a couple of years so I can't help you

the smallest of my Newtonian astro telescopes is significantly smaller than that!

I got rid of my Centon 500 F8 after I did a side by side comparison with my K10D. Centon 500 F8 vs Pentax FA 80-320 at 320 and cropped, the 80-320 won hands down. I would expect you'd get the same result if you compared it to your Tamron 70-300.

if you haven't got a macro lens, but have got a short prime (50mm works well, as does 2, you can't go wrong with a reversing ring.

Either filter thread to K mount to put that lens backwards straight on your camera, or filter thread to filter thread so you can put it on the front of a telephoto for even more silly levels of magnification.

There's a thread around somewhere where a bunch of us competed to demonstrate just how silly the magnification can get. Blew up the letters IRB from below the queens head on a Penny to fill the frame.

I e-mailed them myself shortly after the K10D came out and got more or less the same reply. Still, can't hurt to remind them that some of us would like to buy these lenses occasionally.

The advent of the K100D Super will help in the fight, pretty soon most Pentax cameras will have SDM capability and at that point Sigma will be more likely to include HSM.

I think there are very slight tweeks to the optical formula for the later lenses. Stan's site suggests there is a jump in optical performance from M series to A series, with the F1.4 lenses getting a real improvement and F1.7s a slight one.

I love my 50mm F1.7, small, light, fast and sharp, yet also cheap. It's a dream come true.