Okay, can I add the following

Camera, lenses and accessories:- SRS (of course), Cameraworld and Mathers of Lancashire. All great and worth looking into.
Printer cartridges, Memory cards, paper and batteries (but not their own brand) - 7dayshop.com. Bought lots from them and cannot fault them (apart from their own brand batteries)
Fantastic high street service and studio kit - Jacobs. Bought studio stuff, general accessories (like cleaning kit, filters, the odd compact and lens from them), They know their stuff, all photographers (remember that Jessops?) and in Manchester, even one of them is a proud Pentaxian.
Finally, WEX (warehouse express), not the cheapest, but sometimes have what you are looking for, when no others have, great service too. In fact I use WEX first, to see if they have what I want and then search everyone else, then normally I choose someone else, as they are normally cheaper (poor WEX). but at least they have just about everything listed and in stock. They are also good to create a wish list (for those winning the lottery moments....LOL)

George has a good point.

If you are using an A lens, this will mean that the exposure will be done in camera, but the focus will be done by you. Are you relying on the focus beep in the camera to confirm the area is in focus? If you are only the centre point of the image will be in focus (unlike AF lenses which you can choose the focus point). There are various settings in the menus which can help here, like switching off the beeb, AF adjustment if they are out, etc etc.
Finally, make sure that your diopter is set correctly, as any slight inaccuracy will mean that the image will be out of focus, it needs to be spot on with what your eye sees with manual focus lenses.

Hope this helps.

Okay all, I know its not a Pentax, and if Pentax had a "Pro" spec compact I would be very interested.

Now, has anyone got one of these little gems?
I am asking as my Ricoh R8 has generated a fault (namely smashed LCD, but not from dropping it, but I digress). The Ricoh clearly has a design fault, namely the casing around the LCD is too soft, unlike a number of other cameras. It has gone back, as I only bought it in Feb, but I am not holding my breath.

So, now I am looking for a replacement. Having already got a couple of bridge cameras (in the shape of Fuji's S5000 and S6500fd) I don't want to go down that path.
So, it is to be a compact, yet I want something to be more capable than the R8.
It needs to have RAW, it needs to have AV, SV and M functions, it also needs to be fairly wide (28mm eqv at least).
Now I know the R8 had none of these, but this time I want something superior to the run of the mill compact.

Hence why I have thought of the LX-3

It has RAW, it has full control, it has a fast (F2-2.8 ) lens, it is well made, it has the largest CCD of any compact barring 4/3rds and DP1/2.
Only thing it does not have is a reasonable zoom range (only 24-60 eqv) a little longer would have been nice.

So, does anyone have this camera and what do they think of it? does the limited zoom range hinder at all? Are you happy with the IQ?
Is it a better bet than finding a C***n G10 which is £100 more (best prices)?
Would you consider the Fuji F200EXR a good alternative (although I have seen images from this, and found the detail muddy at full size)

Advices please

Cheers.

Iain

Not sure about the foveon sensor though. The Olympus (or was it the GF1, it was either, need to check the mag again) walloped it in a recent magazine test.
Keep the sensor from the K-7, it is mighty!

I did handle an X1 on Monday, what a lovely piece of kit, Leica might be onto a winner there, except for the price - £1300!

I still have reservations about micro 4/3rds as primary camera on two levels,
One, exposed sensor when changing lenses (and no dust removal system is going to cope with exposed sensors all the time, its bad enough on my K20D)
Two, Lack of viewfinder. No matter what I do with my compact camera, I much prefer to have the camera to my eye, (and EVF's arE not up to scratch yet, ala G1/GH1 may never be.....)

However, as a second backup camera, I cannot fault the GF1/E-P1 concept, I might even get one myself, but if Pentax bring one out, with a K mount adapter, I will be in the queue to buy one, as a support to my K20D.

Update, they no longer produce the 50mm macro.

Interesting though, on WEX, they state the 50-200mm is a Schneider designed lens. What a load of poppycock! LOL

Every Samsung lens IS a Pentax lens, just a different grip.
Only difference is that Samsung don't re-badge the limiteds and DA* ranges (shame really as they would be so much cheaper ). They only rebadge the standard range, namely

10-17mm fisheye (which is a tokina too for CaNikon users)
18-55mm
12-24mm (ditto tokina)
16-45mm
50-200mm
35mm F2
50mm macro
100mm macro (tokina make a 100mm macro, not sure if it based on this lens, but would not be surprised)
They don't have any other lenses in their portfolio.

I was just about to say uninstall PSP and reinstall PSP, but greynolds beat me to it.

As regard to page file size, you should let the OS auto set it for you. In the past I had to manually set the pagefile as windows could not cope (in the period of 3.11, NT and Win95/9 as windows could not cope with memory upgrades. Of course these were the days of 16/32/64MB RAM (imagine that - 64MB RAM was the dogs whatever with NT! and to have the PC at work upgrade to 64MB was a big thing.......LOL)
Nowadays, certainly from XP onwards, windows is more efficient and can adjust the page file dynamically.

Now, and I know this may be a silly question, but what is the file system on your PC? It should be NTFS. However I have come across (certainly in XP) file systems being FAT32 on the main hard drive (your c: drive) Not only is this wrong, but inefficient. It should be NTFS being Vista, but you never know.

Hi and welcome to the forum. If you are wanting the K200D, LCE in Manchester have a couple of new ones left (in Silver mind) and last time I looked, £250 body only.

Give them a bell I am sure that they will be able to help you

John, although I have no intention of selling my MZ cameras, I might be interested in assisting you with your project, whereby loaning the bodies and being involved, cost? just a couple of sets of replacement batteries.

Bodies are MZ-5n and MZ-50 and in good nick.

PM me if you are interested.

I do have the SMC-K 55mm F1.8 lens, which is lovely. Might be worth looking at, although it is longer. I got mine on e-bay for £20.