It's at times like these that I really miss PU not having a laughing smiley like phpBB. Absolutely priceless

We don't have an actual selling price yet, and Pentax do have a recent history of comedy street prices that the lens doesn't actually get close to in real life. The DA35 Macro, for example, has an RRP of £639.99 but sells for £459.

So why does a lens made in Vietnam cost so much more in the UK than the USA? I assume the USA has import taxes too, and since protectionism is still politically fashionable in the US I wouldn't be surprised if they're higher than the EU's.

Doesn't the gun carriage it comes mounted on have a towing rope attached?

They've never failed to pricematch a (non-grey market) UK store if I've asked - worth a try perhaps.

The AF getting more like Nikon is a bad thing?

Besides, at least Pentax haven't done anything really stupid to kill a significant portion of their potential customer base (take a bow, Canon 60D and Sony semi-transparent mirrors )

They're being a bit silly calling it 46MP: it isn't, it's ~15MP.

On normal sensors, there is what's called a Bayer pattern filter. To greatly simplify, the sensor only 'sees' the light level. There is then a filter which 'marks' each pixel as being of a particular colour. So for example one pixel is red, the one next to it is green, the one next to that is blue and so on.

On the Foveon, each pixel captures colour 'properly' - every pixel records every colour (something to do with different colours of light penetrating the surface to different depths). So a 15MP Foveon sensor in a Sigma body is, theoretically, 3x better at capturing colour (I'm not sure about sharpness and other qualities) than a 15MP Sony sensor in a Nikon or Pentax body. That's where the stupid 46MP claim comes from.

AMD did something similar with their computer processors a few years back. In the Pentium 4 era when Intel based everything on clock speed, AMD started giving their processors model numbers to reflect what AMD claimed was their performance-equivalent in Intel terms. So for example one was called the "AMD Athlon X2 3800+" because AMD claimed it offered performance equivalent to a 3.8Ghz Pentium even though its clock speed was 2Ghz. In actual fact it didn't (short story: it was an early dual core processor and software was written for single-core high-clockspeed processors) but I'm aware that the relevance of this is tenuous at best so I'll keep it to a minimum

Yeah, they just have offer free home delivery on online grocery shopping so that they don't need any checkout staff whatsoever.

Don't think so - all batteries and battery-powered devices (like DSLRs) use DC (to use AC it would need to be plugged directly into the wall). I think you may be confused between the two "DC"s involved here: one is direct current, the type of power used by the camera and lens. The other is (and I am cribbing from a post I think of Stefan's in another thread here!) a "DC brushless motor" which is the SDM replacement.

How many lenses sell for slightly more than half their RRP? Does anyone know? The reason I ask is that this would need to sell for £350 tops to not look (to outsiders considering Pentax) like a rip-off compared to the Canikon 18-135s.

I had been thinking about this lens, but with that announcement I've decided to order a(nother) Sigma 50-150 from SRS instead. For me, the greater significance of this lens is whether Pentax really have put an end to the SDM fiasco or whether (as one DPR Forums cynic suggested) they have just renamed SDM in an attempt to avoid the technology's shoddy reputation.

Based on the picture Mike embedded, how effective is the WR likely to be with that double barrel extension? Am I being dense, or will water not end up intruding via the two joins when the lens is retracted?

EDIT: If 'DC' does indeed represent some new flavour of SDM (one that works, even) then it's going to add to the confusion for new users. On Pentax lenses, 'DC' might mean silent lens motor, whereas on Sigma lenses it means an APS-C only lens.