That makes a lot of sense. Discipline. That's what I lack totally. And knowledge. BTW, can anyone recommend a good book on portrait photography? Had a browse through Amazon, saw lots of stuff, but nothing stood out to my untutored eye.

Although I'm certainly going to try and get the short DA* zoom (and then the longer one when it comes out), rather than the kit lens, but this is a question of how long stuff lasts, rather than how it performs. Without weatherproofing, I'm going to find outdoor opportunities pretty limited for much of the year, at least for the kind of things I want to photograph - curtains of torrential rain sweeping down the hillside towards me, huge hailstones bouncing off stuff in all directions, you get the point...

Amazing pictures. And I can see how Granny might object...

Apparently, it'll be a good while before anyone needs to make a decision on actually buying a 35mm macro, anyway. I'll have come up with a better reason to get one by then, I'm sure. Like doing macro photography, for example.

I once used a Photoshop trick on someone else's "brutally honest" portrait, where you made a fairly transparent blurred copy of the red channel and blended it on top using Luminosity mode. Lots of detail, but a sort of hazy glow (it's subtler than it sounds). Great for crows feet. Kind of thing I hope a good camera, excellent lenses and a bit of experience will render unnecessary.

Yes, that's plan B. None of this rain we're getting has actually made it through the walls here yet, but it might still happen, in which case cloth will have to be cut to fit. And this is exactly why I've decided to go with a Pentax - from what I've seen of a friend's pictures and his very old Pentax film camera with various lenses (which he still wants), second best will be way more than good enough.

My sloppy use of language, sorry. I was thinking of full shots, groups, etc. A 35mm on digital is probably OK for that?

Yum. The subtlety of all this really intrigues and amazes... Now do you think the Pentax people sat down one day and decided "Let's design a lens that discerning photographers will one day describe as 'creamy'", or was it more a case of someone playing around with some glass and a loo roll, then suddenly going "Hey, that looks really creamy"? I'm in awe.

Sorry Gwyn, didn't get your reply before posting mine.

Sounds like I need to start a new piggy bank now, just to be redy when the time comes...

Now that's another good question. I've been thinking about getting the weatherproof (always weatherproof, if possible...) 35mm macro when it eventually arrives, and hoping it would double as a portrait lens.

Would that work? Or will old people shun me after seeing their portraits?

That's splendid news, thanks very much. Just the kind of stuff my family are pestering me about. I think I'll probably give it a go, along with the weatherproof wide zoom.

Now if the pointing on the gable end can just hold out for another couple of years...

Thanks, and come the summer, that's exactly the kind of thing I hope to be trying out...

So if I did get this amazing 77mm lens, I'd always be further away from the subject with a digital camera than with a film one (for a given shot), and the perspective of the shot would indeed be quite a bit flatter? Sigh.

Which means that the question I should really have been asking was, is 120mm too long for doing portraits? Sorry to grind away here, but it's an expensive lens, and my pointing and shooting up to now has been mostly outdoor stuff.

Hello,

After many false starts over the last couple of years, with something urgent always coming up before I took the plunge, it looks like I'm finally getting a camera this summer (and the K10D looks to be a bit of a silver lining to the whole business...).

I've also been pleasantly surprised to see that, instead of me going through all the crippling indecision and lack of sleep over what lens(es) to buy, Pentax don't seem to do duff lenses. And only offer ones you might actually find useful. And two from my wish list (the 35mm macro and the long zoom - weatherproofing being what led me here in the first place) haven't even been made yet. Bliss. And the posts on this forum have been a real help, BTW. Thanks.

There's just one thing keeping me up late, and it's a question about prime lenses. I understand that with digital sensors, the view you get is cropped by about a third, so you think of it as having a focal length about 1.5 times longer. But what about perspective? For example, is the perspective you get from e.g. the 77mm Limited (which I might just be able to afford) on a digital camera the same as you'd get from a full-frame film camera? It's just that 120-odd mm seems a little long for portraits.

I realise this isn't strictly a Pentax question (and I'm not strictly a Pentx user yet, either) but could anyone help?