Seen quite a few complaints about the edge sharpness of the Tamron. I have been looking at the Sigma 24-70 but it's quite a beast. I have been thinking about the Pentax 17-70, some people say it's not so sharp at 70mm, but I would appreciate your opinion on that. I don't know anything at all about the Sigma 24-60, a bit short though...

Which of these lenses do you think is best IQ wise at f4-5.6 overall?

F5.6 is about as far as I would like to go, f4 would be better, as IR is about 2 to 3 stops slower than colour. The 35-105 I bought off you sadly din't work for IR, it stopped too much light in IR, about 5 stops slower than t was on the K5. Fantastic lens though.

I am looking for an AF zoom, somewhere around 24-80mmish, that produces very good results without having to be stopped down too much, and is also easy to use with manual focus. The focal range mentioned is ideal for aerial photography, and I want to use it both on the K5 and also on an IR converted Nex5N (with PK adapter, using manual focus) that I have just ordered. 28mm at the wide end would possibly be OK but no more than that.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Don't you need one of these?

Great shot, almost abstract, nice ly done!

Great set, I especially like #1, 8 and 9. What is that weird instrument he's playing in #1? Could attract the anti-terrorist police in the wrong place!

Some great shots, #2 especially, #15 also. With #11 I might be tempted to remove the wing. #3 I like too, the composition works really well.

Very nice, great idea, it's worked pretty well.

Thanks for the comments, I am actually in the process of putting a Blurb book together at the moment, I have been thinkingg about using it as a plug for seeing if I could get it picked up by a publisher. It will be mostly colour, but with a section of IR images too.

I have not been very active on here recently, so thought I would post a few pics taken with the infrared converted K20D I bought from karmamechanic. My main reason for getting interested in IR was that it cuts through dust and UV haze, so to give a demonstration of how well it does that, here's two pics of the same scene, one on the K5 and the other on the IR converted camera. These were taken over the Padma River, near Chittagong in Bangladesh.







The IR version shows up detail on the bottom of the river.

Another three from an area called Munshir Hat, in the Padma River estuary, the first a handheld panorama of five shots, Again, the bottom of the river can be seen, giving a 3D effect. The grey lines are I think plant life of some sort.










Myanmar (Burma)







Turkey




Larger versions can be seen on my Flickr page.