lol, I just saw it at the top of the list with only one reply and chipped in, I never look at the dates.

Still it's a question that gets asked so often, someone will want to know.

Hi and welcome, here are my thoughts:

1) doesn't really do a lot that your kit lens doesn't. It's a bit longer but half its range is already covered by your 18-55. If you get a long zoom, it will be totally covered.

2) All the macro lenses in this price range are excelent. Both the Tamron and Sigma ~100 macros are excelent, for general use out and about I wouldn't go any shorter than 90mm. I use my 90mm with a matched 2x converter when light allows to give sensible working distances so as not to frighten the bugs I'm photographing.

You can also get some bargains on the used market. Several people around here use old manual focus macro lenses with great success.

3) This is the first extra lens most people buy. My advice is get a decent one, so that it will last you a while. My pick would be the Pentax DA 55-300. This lens is sharp all the way to 300mm even wide open which is where it really matters in this kind of lens, since that is where you'll use it 99% of the time.

Deppending on what you actually want the macro lens for, the long zoom will probably get you more or less close enough most of the time. You may well want a proper macro lens at some point, but the long zoom will take care of butterflies and beatles in the meantime.

well that's clearly the reason for the bad jokes, you haven't been drinking enough!!

it's not our place to forgive you, you should be sucking up to your LX, it's her you have wronged!

mmmm I find the wordings Chris points out suspect at best. 10:1 these people haven't even seen one yet.

I stand corrected, I still wouldn't buy one though.

not to mention you spend an awful lot more time looking at the back of the camera with digital.

I wouldn't be without my ERC for my ME-F as it's all that holds the batteries in but on the K10D it would have to have so many holes for buttons and the screen that it would just fall apart.

give me a lowepro toploader any day.

sounds like you're describing an Ever Ready case. The last one I am aware of was for the SFX. Interestingly the K10D does (sortof) fit in the SFX ERC, but not with a sensible lens mounted on it. (yes, I do have too much Pentax junk! alas I have sold my SFX ERC or I'd offer it to you).

They fell out of favour because the standard zoom lenses became too large for a practical ERC to happily contain. The SFX had a really dinky SMC-F 35-70 with it, barely bigger than a 50mm F1.4

ahh the Z-10, now I understand. According to Bojidar it's only got P, M and HyperM so somewhat short on creative automatics.

the ZX-10 is a little basic, but it's got Program, Av, Tv and Manual, what more do you need?