sigma 170-500

if anybodys interisted just spoted this in the film camera non specfied secsion on e/bay tonight for £250 buy it now i i had spare money i would buy it

page 2 9 days to run

It's the film model not the DG so the IQ isn't as good.

LINK here

I thought SRS were one of the more intelligent dealers
but after seeing them advertise a 500mm lens on ebay as 500
I'm not to sure

Anyway I'll do them a favour and list it here:

SIGMA 150-500 F5.6-6.3 HSM - PENTAX - NEW - UK DEALER!

£649 BIN 2 available

I'd also say if it was a DG or not if it was me selling it, but
I'm not and I'm not doing anymore work for SRS

I once wrote to MXV telling them that every lens they had listed
on ebay wasn't listed correctly and that it wouldn't be caught by peoples searches resulting in them missing a lot of sales. I got a nasty email back saying that they had been selling lenses for xx years and knew
best how to sell them. They carried on with their own way of listing. About 2 months later they went bust

I'm not quite sure what you are saying about SRS Algernon? They listed a "500mm as 500" - errr, what? or was that your typo and you meant something else? Anyway, their listings regularly show up on my Ebay saved search for "DSLR - Pentax - UK Only" so they are being listed properly.

As they seem to be quite successfully selling tons of gear on Ebay (average of >300 items per month looking at their feedback), and often for more than they advertise them on their website or sell in the shop, I think they seem to have got something right...


A better target would be to critisise Ebay for their confusing and over-lapping catagories. Plus the way some annoying dealers spam every catagory under the sun with filters etc.

500 and 500mm are two completely different words . Every lens manufacturer in the world uses 500mm as the lens description

If I'm in the market for a Sigma 150-500mm and type that into ebays search box it picks up 15 lenses, but not the SRS one, which is OK if they aren't interested in selling it, and a lot of people who list on ebay aren't

Now you've learn't something about listing and searching for lenses on ebay

Sigma 500 is also a flashgun (EF-500)

If I'm in the market for a Sigma 150-500mm I search on ebay for "Sigma Pentax (500, 500mm) -(flash, diffuser)"

That works, but if you leave out "Pentax" it hits 115 items.
There's no substitute for seller copying the description accurately off the manufacturers box. It shouldn't be down to the buyer.

The advantage of 500mm in the description in the photography section is that nearly all the results will be for a lens.

One grey area is with apertures. Because f/8 technically is the diam. of the aperture, it shouldn't be abbreviated to f8 or f5.6, but manufacturers do that so I suppose it has to be accepted. Some even use f:8

It's always going to be a problem. After all, French sellers (maybe elsewhere in Europe too) would write f5,6 (those crazies! ). And lots of private sellers mistakenly include the first mm (e.g. Tamron 70mm-300mm).

You should see some of my saved ebay searches, here's one from when I was keeping an eye out for a Pentax 300mm:

Pentax, (300, 300mm) -70 -80 -60 -55 -100 -75 -28 -70mm -80mm -60mm -55mm -100mm -75mm -28mm -af70 -af28 -6x7 -67 -600 -1000 -900

That's a good one Tim

MXV were doing things like:

Pentax {55 mm - 300 mm} f 4-5 - f 5-8

they couldn't even do that consistently

How many people on here actually searched for a lens and found MXV came up in the results?

Heh now you mention it don't think I've ever seen an MXV listing. And I've done my fair share of searching!!! (Thankfully my LBA seems to be in remission, possibly due to my incredibly large overdraft )

And what about the new fad where they list it as a lense.

Totally buggers up my searches

Yes I know I can leave out the lens bit

Well I love poorly spelt ebay listings. If you happen across one, you can usually get a bargain

Couldn't agree more. If I want a 52mm filter I will search for a 52mm filter. Attempting to sell me one by clogging up my search results for "Pentax" won't work!

Ebay's search thing does seem to deal with "lense" - it seems to look for parts of words, so typing it properly as "lens" will still show the wonky listings.

I've just taken to searching "Pentax" on a daily basis. There aren't usually that many new items per day and it doesn't take long to scroll through.