Grass works very well! K.

Not quite the same though it is? A bit like making a water colour by applying a filter in photoshop...

K.

I love it!

K.

No 3 for me too. Much nicer without the little bit of sky. It is a lovely photo.

K.

The kit lenses are very variable. My one, thankfully, is pretty good and I am happy with it. Others have been less satisfied. I would have thought a weather sealed version of the kit lens would have been ideal, particularly if you can try them out in the shop until you get a sharp one. (Don't be shy about trying a few until you get one you are happy with. Manufacturing tolerances of both the lens and the camera mean that a good one on one body may suck on another body.)

K.

The MX is an easy camera to use. It is all manual, the only thing the battery powers is the lightmeter. You simply adjust the aperture / shutter speed until you have a green light in the viewfinder. Amber lights are +/- 1/2 stop, red lights > +/- 1 stop. The meter has a centre-weighted lightmeter which is fine with print film, but will tend to under-expose a little bit with slide film if you are photographing a scene with sunny skies. Meter off the grass in those cases.

Best wishes, K.

The battery drain problem (as I understand it) is simply a mechanical linkage which occasionally jams and means the meter doesn't turn off. This will drain the batteries in about three days. There is a website which shows how to repair this (the link is on ths site somewhere).

If you aren't going to use an older camera for a while it is worth removing the batteries. Perhaps the most common problem with 'classic' cameras is corrosion in the battery compartment.

K.

I'll second that thought, and if it metered correctly with old glass that would be good too. Perhaps, even (shock horror) an "uncrippled" k mount again.

If they would reintroduce some of their accesories would be useful, like a refconverter (I don't think the A one is still available but I may be wrong), focus rail, AF extension tubes (I know one would want to fine tune focus manually), all that sort of thing.

K.

Despite only having two models Pentax do seem to be holding their own, however. We will have to see what the year brings. The medium format system will give them quite a string to their bow.

I wouldn't want them to go down the Sony route of having multiple models almost (but not quite) identical in spec. Three or four quality models aimed at different parts of the price range seems ample to me.

My impression is that Pentax is "on the up" at the moment, and I'm feeling quite buoyant about the future. Yes, I'd like a tilt/shift lens (it won't happen!) and yes some of you want longer telephotos (that might happen) but what we have is largely damn good. And if you really want a 600 f/4 you could have bid for the one on ebay. I doubt a new one would cost any less!

K.

Peronally I'd rather drink a beer that meant I could stand afterwards. If I want something strong I'll have a wee dram of a good single malt. Wee maybe more than one wee dram

Could we start a whisky thread too?

K.