Spoke to Pentax yesterday and they suggested that with a converter 67II lenses would fit on a *ist D,
if an actual PK mount lens isn't available. Does anyone have any experience with this :

Sam

as with most traditional SLRs, this isn't an produced noise, but the actual mirror flipping up to expose CCD. so unless you can force the camera to take pictures with the mirror locked up ( you will not be able to use the view finder) it won't work. I used an *ist D and I do not remember anything like this in the manuel.

Sam

I would be very carfull about taking lenses apart myself, but would send them to a servicing company, just because thay are expensive. I have never had problems with scraping noises in barings, but grit between focusing or zoom rings on the lense. a cost of a service is always going to be cheaper than a replacement lense.

Sam

Spoke to sigma today, and although they didn't tell me why they had only just released 300-800, they did tell me that they are going to release a 800 fixed telephoto in the future they guy I spoke to wasn't able to give me a time frame.

Sam

was going to call Sigma and ask them about why they changed what lenses they make they now do a 300-800mm zoom, but have been busy, I think If i want the increase in quality I will have to spend the money.

Thankyou for all the advice

Sam

John:
just to conferm that I was using a 400mm f5.6 smc lens, with what is a cheap 2x lens, maybe a better quality converter could solve a lot of my problems.

Terry:
cropping does sound reasonable, but the online stock website that I use most of the time, requires images greater than 3000 pixals on the longest side, which is rather limiting.

Thank you for your advice this is not a decsion I am going to make quickly

It is quite interesting to watch market forces have there effect in the camera market. Although I am not looking at camera bodies at the moment, but lenses. The majority of my looking is on the internet. I have been looking at getting a lens around the 800mm size which I am aware is not the amateur market, I cannot seem to buy any lens for a Pentax over 600mm at the moment. I thought my problems would be solved when sigma released their two latest super tele lenses. the 300-800 zoom and a new 800 fixed. When I look at retailers I found only cannon and Nikon mounts available, so I called sigma and was told that they are not currently producing either lens for a Pentax and they do not expect that they would be in the future! obviously they do not expect to sell enough to cover production costs. Is this the effect that when professionals moved over from film to digital did those who used Pentax, move to another manufacturer because a Pentax digital SLR wasn't available? I don't know. But this cannot be a good sign, because if you cannot get the tools for the job from manufacturer X you will go to manufacturer Y. When spending thousands on camera equipment these are important questions if this was a trend that was to continue, I must emphasize that this is only two examples from one manufacturer.
Sam