It's covered in another thread somewhere on here. (Ebay Madness link )
As with shill bidding people will just keep nibbling away with
higher bids just to see what the higher bid is. The big problem
is if TWO bidders put very high maximum bids on just after
an auction starts..... the price zooms up to the 2nd highest
straight away. It happened recently with a faulty lens worth
£10 shot up to £41, no feedback has been left to date

Gixen or snip(dot)pl are good for sniping the latter
costs about 17p for each successful snipe.

Sounds like some clown who probably doesn't even know you should
take the lens cap off

It would be very hard to put into practice even using the zone
system. Safest way to make sure that you have the important stuff
is meter off a graycard or use an incident lightmeter

You need to start sniping yourself Matt
Putting on high bids like your £50 one is just saving
the seller from having to do his own shill bidding

Pentax Lenses

"The Emperor of Creative Photography"
-

Great photos... Sorry to hear about the crash. I hope you
fully recover from the stiff neck etc.

It's very difficult to focus a 24-28mm accurately beyond about 10m.
I've done some tests on a wall 22m away at f/5.6 and f/8 both MF and
using the green light in the viewfinder and the best way seems to be
set the lens to INFINITY (providing it's OK on the camera at infinity).

There's very little between about 2m and INF on the focus scale.

I expect MF first and then set the focus mark halfway between that
and infinity would also work.

Using f/11 seems to make the centre slightly softer but brings
the corners in a bit better.

A Butterfly!

Some nicely composed shots there. Captured what happened very well.

Good to hear that Gareth... no time for photography now!