Brown trousers rafting, you mean, Gareth!

48 foot- that's crazy. I experienced the Tewkesbury flood from close up (on a narrowboat from which the fire brigade had to rescue me on a dinghy) so I can guess at the horrors people are experiencing. I hope that no towns were built within the floodplain.

I suspect Pentax have realised that having 4 models gives them a lot more presence so they're probably delaying announcing the old ones as discontinued for as long as possible. Stock may be starting to run out in some places now though.

Thanks Tim, that's really helpful. The pics are lovely. I think I might do as you did and wait for a second hand one to come up.

Smeggy, yes the sigma sounds an intriguing lens. It's definitely on my radar if one comes up 2nd hand.

I have my Xmas money scraped together and one day left before VAT goes up!

I am happy enough with my DA16-45mm but one thing I do wish for is a wider usable max aperture. It's good at f4 especially at the long end, but generally I stop down to f5.6 for better results. And f4 does not give much separation between the subject and background.

I am tempted to look at getting a Tamron 17-50mm, which seems to have pretty good sharpness at wider apertures than the DA16-45mm, and better extreme edge performance across the board.

What are people's thoughts on the Tamron's performance 'wide-open' - are oof backgrounds rendered nicely? A couple of shots I have seen have rather jittery bokeh. Does it feel quite a heavy lens? I hate schlepping large lenses.

Of course for nice bokeh (and portability) the new DA35 would be better, but it's usage is then limited by its focal length. I would also be tempted to get a second hand copy of the 35macro to throw in the added value of extreme close ups (and beautiful build quality!)

Haha yes, a Canonite friend photoshopped a particularly bad picture of me, which I used on the film I did for him: http://www.differentbypentax.com/#/video/4d1d2b1179051

I also noticed Haworth made a brief appearance, or at least his avatar, and our own irrepressible George too (he's pictured on the front one of the newspapers).

Wow... now that's clever marketing!

The Canon IXUS 100 IS does have an optical viewfinder, and looks quite good... it's very stylish in black.... think I saw it for under 80.00 in Comet.

Great to see the area I grew up here on the forum! I like the second shot looking up the High Peak Trail particularly, but there's perhaps a bit too much 'ground' at the bottom.

As you're getting the 12-24mm, why not the DA10-17mm fisheye? Looks to be a superb lens and 'promises to be a lot of fun'

Inexpensive too.

Pm sent re DA35 ltd.