A further option is a bellows unit - you can get new ones for about £25 including postage on ebay if you don't mind ordering them from China - combine that with say a Pentax 50mm SMC M 1.7 or 2.0 (which you can pick up for less than £20 including postage if you try - avoid the 1.4 - it is more expensive and less good for macro) and you have a very capable macro kit which will go astonishingly close (about 3x magnification - fill the frame with an ant - if the ant will stay still that is...) and produce very good results for under £50

On the MRT in Singapore 2002
Pentax LX held at waist level with the viewfinder removed. SMC M 35 2.0. Slide film (I think Sensia 400) Exposure not recorded.

Bluebells in a wood in Pirbright


*istDS SMC A 135 2.8, 1/125 @ F11, 800ASA (no tripod!) processed in photolab 3 & Paint Shop Pro X2

How about this?
http://www.speedgraphic.co.uk/prod.asp?i=7285&1=Exped+Viewfinder+Trekking+Pole

The site looks good!

Just curiosity - the layout is almost identical to Park Cameras - are you using the same system?

Also I'm not sure about listing compacts by price bracket - manufacturer would be better.

And one little niggle - when you use the drop down search boxes it 'forgets' what you entered so you have to reslelect all elements if you want to change one if you want to adjust your search (The Park Camera site does this also)

I'm in England at present staying with my parents (which is home when in the UK) - and my only decent shop and keeper shot from Rome (Campo di Fiore market) was entered in an earlier competition!

Curiously I have had a plan of doing a set of mono pictures of the shops on our road (Via di Monserrato) but have not got round to it yet...

Back to Rome Saturday...

This was the local paper shop in my parents village. The keeper has long since gone...
Shot on an Optio W20 & processed in Paint Shop Pro X2

Our house (AKA the English College Rome) as seen from the Victor Emmanuel Monument - it is the one with the bell tower in the middle and most of the rooftops immediately behind it.
K10D Pentax 18-250@250 1/500 F8 200ASA, cropped


NB all the best views of Rome are from the VE monument - because that way they don't have the VE monument in them

I used to subscribe to Outdoor Photography - their contributors include some of the best in the business. However after 100 issues or so there are only so many variations on the coastal sunset/flower macro/wildlife shot and now that I know how to use an ND Grad, a tripod and a polariser and have learnt the rule of thirds and that I ned a small aperture for good depth of field, and that the best landscapes are usually taken at the beginning or the end of the day in spring and autumn... the rest is patience...

So I now just pick up whichever one looks most interesting when I am in a newsagents...

And why are tripods in these magazines always 'trusty'??

There are reviews in both Practical Photography (four stars) and Digital Camera (89%) this month - both are pretty positive, though both have slight issues with handling (they don't like the need to use the Fn button for ISO setting among other things) and Digital Camera is not impressed with the kit lens, claimimg it to be soft at the edges (maybe they got a bad copy?). They particularly like the features, image quality and innovative features such as EDR