No fleabay bargains today

I had my eye on a sale which was poorly listed as "Pentax P30 with extra lenses". My eagle eye spotted that two of the lenses were SMC-A 200mm F4 and SMC-A 100mm F2.8 both of which would get a good price on their own (about £90-£100 each). The third lens was also Pentax but I couldn't quite make it out. Unfortunately, other eagled eyed persons also spotted it and went for £222.11, not an unsurprising price given the A-series lenses. More gob-smacking was that a SMC-M 20mm F4 went for £200. Quite a bit more than they usually go for (£100-£150).

Oh well, no bargains for me today!

Best wishes, Kris.

Kris There's always another bargain around the corner..

After bidding on several Zeiss Sonnar 135/3.5's (and not being prepared to pay very much money for one, so losing out every time) I finally won one for the princely sum of £26.00.

The description was poor (as was the photo) and I only spotted it with less than an hour to go so had no time to ask the seller anything about it; subsequently I've spent the last 10 days waiting for it to arrive and wondering if I'd bought a complete dog.

To cut a long story short it arrived this afternoon and I can only describe it as mint - in fact it looks like it's never been used! Focus is smooth, the aperture clicks round nicely and positively and the original caps are present and correct. Even the slide-out hood has just the right amount of friction. Glass is the very definition of pristine and there aren't even any flecks of dust inside, let alone fungus!

I stuck my M42 adaptor on it and went out to grab a few shots before the sun went down and I couldn't be happier with the results.

So today's one of those days when I'm rather pleased with eBay...

Yup, ebay is definitely a win-some loose-some sort of place. Quite pleased with my latest purchase, an old ES. Excellent condition. I was a little worried about the metering until I found out I was using it wrong. Thank heaven for on-line manuals. The camera also came with a Vivitar series one 70-210mm f/3.5 zoom. What a monster! Makes the DA* 50-135mm look petite.

What I hadn't realised until today is that the SMC Takumars have an extra pin to let the camera body know which aperture you have set whereas the Super Taks don't necessitating stop down metering. Oh well, had plenty of practice with that on the K10

Cheers, Kris.

I have a mint, still in the box, unused Hoya 135mm M42 lense, and am waiting for an old Honeywell Spotmatic to use it on.

Should be here before Xmas but...

Will post a few shots when I've had chance to use the combo.

I'm waiting for the weather to pick up a bit - can't muster any enthusiasm for outdoors and it's not really an indoors-y sort of lens (although it does focus down to 1m).

135mm does seem quite a nice length on digital though, I can now see the appeal of the DA*50-135 better than I could before - not that I'll be buying one of course!

Well done Hefty, I don't feel so guilty about my bargain now