Bite their hand off Pa. You can sell that lens for a tidy profit. 250 euros is the steal of the century. For reference I just sold one for 370 GBP on ebay...

You could sell it and buy a second hand regular DFA model, or a Tamron 90mm etc, and be over 100 euros up. OTOH it's a beautifully made bit of kit.

I agree with your sentiment G. That's why I'm not currently tempted to upgrade from my k7 to a k5. I can understand the move from apsc to full frame though, that's a more meaningful transition. A shame you can't do that and remain with Pentax, although by the end of the year who knows..

If your lens is genuinely 'duff' you should be able to take it back to Jessops, no bother. Stick at it for a bit though. Try it for some wide aperture portraits for example. If it's missing focus, try manual or live view focusing... If that gets you a better result (neither are affected by front or back focus issues), it may be that the lens is back or front focusing in AF.

Lovely composition and 'eye contact'!

Who's to say AA batteries won't be obsolete in 30 years time! My guess is we'll either be using some sort of nano-fusion power generators, or we'll be back to hand-collected coal and firewood

The problem is, the kit lens is respectably sharp stopped down, and 35mm is its sweet spot! You're probably right that any difference would be more pronounced on a higher resolution sensor. However I don't buy primes primarily for extra sharpness - wider *usable* maximum apertures, small size and nice rendering / bokeh are the things I am looking for.

Thanks John. I presume Google Translate has translated kroner into pounds - I doubt it's really going to cost £1,999!

It's a lot longer than the 50mm, and not much bigger, so it would work as a sort of discrete telephoto for candid portraits, even doggy ones. You can use it for concert shooting if you are fairly near the stage. It's acceptable wide open (in Av mode, which is more convenient) although better stopped down to f5.6. The shots above are lovely and sharp by the way!

*Not rumour*: there is a new compact out:




http://www.foto.no/cgi-bin/articles/articleView.cgi?articleId=44496

Note that the camera has a shutter button on the side for shooting in portrait format!

Looking at the thread on 'the other site', the new mirrorless model may apparently already be in the hands of testers and several people have mentioned a very 'brick-like' design allowing it to be sat on it's side or on one end. Apparently it also looks very unusual!

Apparently there'll be another announcement after this one, too; so fairly early into the new year and Pentax may well have three new models.