I am sitting in the SAA lounge in Johannesburg with 10 rolls of Pan F. Security did a hand check on my international transfer. Very nice but your mileage may very.

On filters. Yellow-green very nice but I have read that may be an artifact of older film emulsions. Yellow may do the same thing now for sky--but seems a tad better for foliage. Orange is great for blue sky. Red is hit or miss. A regular green filter can be useful. With a Monochrome you could probably use an orange all the time.

UHH members have given great answers. There is one other thing I know of that can affect price. Most lenses now have aspherical lens elements. Hybrid aspherical lens elements are often used in kit lenses to reduce price. Those consist of a piece of plastic that is cemented on a spherical glass element to create the aspherical shape. A step up from that is the molded aspherical glass element. A heated piece of glass is pressed into a mold. The best is the precision ground aspherical element. I'm not sure who is producing those. I think they are prohibitively expensive.

If I ever shot digital, this would be the camera I'd buy. I love the concept. When I started shooting film I was hesitant that I'd "lose" shots but after a short while I found that it's liberating; as you said, I don't worry about the last shot, I don't take my mind off of the subject or be "out of the moment" because I'm searching through menus or looking at LCD's...I'm always looking at the current/next shot and "in the moment" with a film camera (and this camera too if I had one)

I disagree somewhat. The "best available" always commands a premium price, and in this day and age, it will become obsolete much faster than in the past. Try to use a 10 year old "top of the line" computer for anything. Chances are it cost thousands when new, and within 2-3 years, the mainstream computers bettered it in performance. This has been a never ending cycle forever with these things. It's the same thing with cameras. There were 6 megapixel cameras at one time that cost thousands of dollars. The advances in sensors and other features have been so great since then that you're missing a lot of you're still using one of those.

I say buy something that you can afford that gives good performance first and once you learn photography and what your needs are, then look at how far up the price ladder you're willing to go.