[GEli]

Originally Posted by ditch_azeroth

sweet mother of God - those are nice focals for 2.8. i've heard of their good optics, must cost a bundle. as for nikon, it's really not that bad. if you're just starting to get into digital photography, i'm pretty sure that you wouldn't have old lenses that don't have motors. because of this move of not having internal focus motors, i'm sure nikon's bound to release new lenses completely compatible for the d40/40x/60 soon enough. sigma's got nice lenses too for them, but i really can't rely on the quality of their lower end lenses.

Yes, I nearly wet myself when I put the 16-50mm DA* on my camera at the store. Sadly you're right about the prices - the 50-135 DA* is $1100 and the 16-50 is $1000. That's in Canada, mind you, where we get shafted even when the dollar is at parity, so it may be slightly cheaper in the US. Even at $200 less, though, those prices aren't small commitments to the system.

As for RAW compatibility, you can shoot in either PEF (Pentax's proprietary RAW format) or DNG with the K200D. There's a slight file size difference, as the PEF format is slightly more efficient at storing data, but I think it's well worth not having to convert when importing to PS or Lightroom.