Interesting - quite a different feel with the similar settings. My mother was a Pentax user - she let me play with an old camera of hers, purely manual, which is how I learned my basic photo skills (my photo skills are still pretty basic!) I now have Nikons - and though I'd love to try out other makes, I'm pretty much stuck - the old story of once you have a few lenses it becomes too expensive to change. Plus I feel very comfortable with my equipment, maybe just because I'm so familiar with it. I agree that lenses have their own personalities; my current favourites are a 105 mm macro and a 70-200 mm f2.8.
