Lens or new camera advice appreciated..

You're making too many assumptions. If one's not prepared to think, no amount of advice is going to improve your photography.

Don't
worry,
I won't
bother posting
to
Old maids
again.
Incidentally, " Beginner", I find your Gallery pics amongst the best on this site. Don't fall foul of the lowest-common-denominator approach of most of this site.
Peter, I'm intrigued by this dumbing down. Too many of the posts here don't consider the originator of threads at all, it seems to me;they blithely continue doing their own thing. Bye, all!

Crikey ---- what's just happened?

This is a really friendly and helpful forum.

I've hardly ever posted but learn something every day when I read the contributions.

Please contributors, don't be put off by unfriendly posts.

No pleaseing some..

Your right Steve, we all learn something every day..

I feel sort of responsible for this and unreservedly apologise to all concerned.

Mike

I'll contradict my post about not posting again once as I didn't see Mikew's answer when I continued, and don't want you, Mike, to think I was saying that to you, as I liked your post, although no, I was reflecting on the advice to insert spaces.

My point was people don't seem to bother with my attempts to see all sides of issues, and , if people will follow the thread, I think they may see that it is unlikely to change with a simple formatting exercise; I just can't put it any simpler. Has anyone actually read my initial post?

Naturally if I thought I could simply make it more accessible, I would do so. However, it is probably best if I don't contribute again, it would seem.

Happy photography, all.

Martin

I am completely bewildered by this topic. It started out offering Amanda advice. John chipped in with a simple comment about readability or lack of it and suddenly all hell seemed to break loose.

Come on fellas don't be so sensitive! If you don't like the advice on formatting, ignore it, don't get on your high horse about it. John is a very well respected member of the forum, and very moderate in all his doings - that's why he's a moderator here! He was just making a suggestion.

It is sad if someone feels the need to leave after such a small spat.

I love the work our moderators do here. Like it or not, this is a very civil forum 99% of the time.
For the other 1% let's forgive and forget and move on. I'm bad for going off topic, and love a good scrap every now and then, but maybe Amanda doesn't. Poor amanda's question, and the good answers are lost somewhere in the first or second page.....

Perhaps a good idea now to get back to the point. Hopefully, Amanda will have picked up some good points amongst the comments on this thread.

/// top man

Amamda - I have a K10D and although I have been fascinated by the K20D (still am) I thought that upgrading my lens kit would take precedence over the actual camera as its the glass (as well as the photographer) that's the rate limiting step... After all, what's the point of spending the best part of 500 pounds on a better body if you have a budget lens (however good or bad) on the front.

So I have been filtering out my slow budget zooms and replacing them with FA prime, FA Ltd, and DA* zoom in the past 18 months...

then when I upgrade the camera body then it has the glass to match....

there is some quality glass out there and you'll get some quality advice from guys on here on which lenses to buy and which one to avoid...

The FA 50 mm is a really good lens, and there are some good DA lenses (16-45 and 17-70) available.....

Good luch with whatever you decide

You're all right. Every post was to try to get back to the topic, and all I got was carping.
I'm not impressed with advice which tells Amanda to buy something when her Q. was does she need to.

Thank you all very much for your advice...sorry it turned into a bit of an arguement!

I have taken in everyones advise and very grateful. I am off out today to start moving more, get stuck into the boys running about...stop zooming in so much. I'm also going to start taking lots of the same shots with different settings, start comparing more so I can learn from that.

I will then start looking at a decent lens that suits and leave upgrading the K100 until I am more confident.

Thankyou all for your advice, I have taken it all in and am off to practice, I will no doubt be back soon with posted pics for more advice....so much to learn.. but so much fun!

Yes, please do post some pictures, we'd love to see them!

To address your original post, what you buy is largely dependant on your budget and what you like to take photo's of.

For weather sealing,higher pixel count, and fast lens, you'd need a combination of the K20D and a DA* lens.

Both the DA* 16-50 and 50-135 will increase your low light opportunities, but not by much as they are both have a max aperture of f2.8.

John's advice of the FA 50mm 1:1.4 is sound, but it's not weather sealed and you'd have to review your images to determine if this is a fixed focal length that you would use very often.

Best advice I can give is buy good glass first, get closer to your subject or buy longer focal length lenses to reduce the need for cropping.

Your K200D (EDIT: I meant K100DS) is an excellent camera and I doubt that you need to change to a K20D just yet. The only real advantage you'd get by so doing is the higher pixel count and weather sealing.

With regard to sharper images, the lens plays an important part, but it doesn't end there. focussing technique and post-processing of RAW files are equally important.

But Peter, the K200D also has weather sealing. Perhaps you were referring to Amanda's K100DS?

Amanda, my interpretation of your original question is that you, like myself, will benefit from the constructive comments and critique given in the Your Photos section. And I don't believe that your equipment is the limiting factor.

I recently upgraded from K100D to K200D, mainly to get the weather sealing and the increased number of functions available. I enjoy my kit, and I have a long way to go before I have exploited all possibilities it offers.

As to John Riley's advice on formatting, I wholeheartedly agree. Most people will find a solid block of text very hard to read, and will most probably skip the whole entry. I was rather surprised by Martin's reaction to a friendly advice.

All right, thanks, Terry, I stand corrected, although I must say I wonder what you all do when faced with a book.

I did find John's "incredibly" off-putting a bit pompous-sounding, as it's to me a matter of opinion, but you and Gwyn are so right in that I was over-sensitive and over-reacted.

It's good to see that at least some seem actally to have read Amanda's post. I began to wonder earlier and agree so much that it's probably not an equipment issue.

It's good that you're persevering, Amanda, I think.

Martin