Excellent point. For the majority of photographs people take, the Pentax AF speed is more than sufficient. The Sigma 70-200mm HSM on my Canon focuses really fast, but the 17-85mm USM is roughly the same speed as the 18-55mm WR on my K-7.

I don't know what unacceptably soft is in your book, but my lens is softer at f/5.6 than it is at f/11. Here's a quick set I made of some text. I'm quite happy with the lens as the difference is only noticeable when viewing at 100% on screen. On my normal prints, I can't find any fault.

It turns out that they didn't have the Pentax 16-50mm f/2.8 in stock. They've since removed that listing

There's a shop in Woking called Harpers Photographic, and they appear to have the cheapest Pentax DA* 16-50mm that I can find. Has anybody had any experience with them? I'm not expecting SRS microsystems like reputation, but I'm keen to avoid any rogue traders.

The large number of AF points can be useful when trying to track a moving object. I don't do sports photography, but I can see why some of the photographers that do rave about the Canon 7D's 19 pt AF module and the Nikon 51pt AF module that's used in their high end cameras.

For most of us, it's just a gimmick.

I've seen this claim made numerous times, but there's never been any thorough analysis to confirm it. (Normally) You can't just shrink the size of the front element by 3mm without making any other optical changes to the lens. Why bother to make a change to the front element if you've not made changes elsewhere? I guess we have to wait for someone like Klaus from Photozone to do a review.

I've personally found the 50-200mm WR to be a competent lens. My only complaint would be that the focusing speed is rather slow, particularly at 200mm.

The increase in noise is marginal and only visible at 100% magnification. Noise can be removed/reduced in post production. Blown highlights can't be rescued.

ISO 200 isn't really a problem unless you're trying to blur movement.

You have one particular tax that we don't have. Health insurance.

G[/quote]Yeah, because our health insurance is "free".

No it doesn't. It causes the RAW files to be underexposed by 1 stop. I leave it on when I'm shooting RAW as the K-7 handles shadows really well and I could do with more natural/unclipped highlights.

I bought a Metz 48 AF-1 when I got my Pentax K-7. I can't fault it, works great off camera as well as on camera. If I had to buy another flash gun, it would probably be the Metz 58 AF-1 as it's a more powerful flash.