that must be the case, because while I'm willing to believe that some of us are just more picky than others when considering a lens in isolation, it doesn't seem likely that Clarky and I could compare two lenses which perform the same and come to such totally irreconcilable conclusions. There's either something wrong with his 50-200 or my 200 F4, and I don't think it's the latter.

Thats very interesting, because my DA50-200 is if anything slightly better than my M series F4 200mm. The latter is a very nice lens, but my DA is smaller and better, I only use the 200M for its speed or if I want to double it to 400 F8.

well I certainly wouldn't go up there WITHOUT a camera!

IIRC Pentax has been up everest before in the guise of the mighty midget Auto110. Ideal for the size and weight constraints mentioned

it's not ideal, but the K10D actually fits pretty well into an SFX ERC, if you can get hold of one.

just the best idea which comes instantly to mind.

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on progressing from Lurker to poster

Hi Martin, thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately you misunderstand (or perhaps I didn't explain well enough)

I don't have a DS, just a DL2 and a K10D. The reason I want a DS screen is that I have heard here and elsewhere that they fit the K10D and that a K10D with a DS screen meters properly with M series lenses.

I have considered the Katz-Eye screens in the past, but I am partial to spot metering at times so the exposure errors introduced when using spot mode put me off somewhat. Also I have never really had a problem focusing manually with the ground glassAlso I have never really had a problem focusing manually with the ground glass

A number of people have said that if you swap the K10D focus screen for one from a *istDS then the metering issues with M series lenses go away.

This sounds great and I would dearly love to do it as I have a number of M series and equivalent lenses which I have neither the money nor the inclination to replace with modern equivalents.

One slight problem, where can I get a standard *istDS focusing screen from? That is of course without having to buy a *istDS around it?

And does anyone know how much they cost?

I think that's reached epidemic proportions around here, the only cure seems to be a full set of DA*, FA* and Ltd lenses.

Perhaps we could set up some sort of charitable foundation?

That's much easier to read

As I said in answer to one of your other posts, personally I don't care if your grammar is imperfect as long as it's easily understandable. Sometimes people on internet forums can get overly hung up on things, and everyone has pet peeves which annoy them, but a little whitespace and a few full stops go a long way to make posts easier to read. Most people will ignore a few slip ups provided it's legible.

A tip, if you use the Firefox web browser you get in line spell checking on forums. You can always tell when I'm posting from a machine which only has internet explorer because my rate of spelling errors goes up about 400%!

something to watch out for is the 4G and up cards are SDHC. The current crop of SDHC cards seem to be a bit slow compared to the old cards.

the K10D has a pretty big buffer so it doesn't notice much, but it is nice to have a fast card. Doesn't need to be the fastest in the world, but I really notice the difference between my cheapo cards and my slightly less cheap Dane Elec 60x card. Of course my Sandisk Extreme III is faster still, but it's less noticable.