Mmm hmmm no-one could possibly countenance mounting the lens on your camera and walking straight through customs without batting an eyelid.... could they?

Much cheaper to download one of the free HDR programs!

I always wonder how the 17-70 would fare. Apparently it has a gasket which would at least prevent water ingress through the lens mount.

The K-5 auto-aligns the shots, making in camera HDRs much more viable. It was pretty dumb omitting this feature from the K-7 and K-x.

Well, there is a grain (sorry!) of truth in it... at one time some of the Sonys and Canons were using much stronger noise reduction, which smeared and obliterated detail, whereas you could argue that the fine grain-like luma noise in images from a K20 or K7 is much less destructive. Look at the Cameralabs comparison of the K20d vs the Canon 450D and a Sony 350. link

But clearly at some point the sensors improved to the point where the low noise was down to the sensor itself rather than 'noise reduction'. That's what caught the K-7 out

Maybe in a years time it'll be £200 cheaper. That's only about £18 per month to have the camera now!

Never mind Ken, you can always order your lube online.

Could the new firmware have smuggled in improved shadow noise removal when using 'shadow correction'?

Lol I do remember that before the K-x the party line was that Pentax retained more detail by allowing more iso noise than the competition. When the K-x came out, the hair shirt was cast off...

Lightroom seems to have much more control over the whole RAW conversion process (including effects you would normally have to apply post-conversion in PSE) and it's seamlessly combined with a powerful photo organiser. I used to be sceptical, but I got the free beta download, and was sold on it pretty quickly.