Well, did you expect Pentax to shoot themselves in the foot?

I'll be getting the 50-135 but since I have the 16-45, I'll have to wait and see if I run into any situations where the extra stop would be needed.

I'm more interested in a 200 f/2.8, the FA version is still available (B&H) but the smaller image circle version is probably lighter.

Interesting to view from this side of the Pond.

In the USA, the law deals with a concept called "reasonable expectation of privacy". If you're walking down the street, you certainly don't have any expectation of privacy. In your home, that's another story.

Photographing a building or park or site from a public street of sidewalk is technically perfectly legal. Of curse, the current version of the 1789 Alien and Sedition Act (Homeland Security, in doublespeak) is now causing the Stazzi - oops, I mean police and military - to circumvent these laws much the way King George IV is claiming that he "never vetoes bills" by producing 'signing statements" that effectively completely change what Congress has presented.

The original act lasted until 1801, when wiser heads prevailed. We'll see what happens in 2008.

You might be interested to know that during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, that icon of freedom, suspended Habeas Corpus. The Court eventually slapped him down, not before lives were ruined.

But if you stand your ground, and carry the relevant legal documents (that outline the laws by which photographs may be taken) you can generally get your way. Sometimes, the goons aren't smart enough to be worth dealing with so you just leave.

At least the "land of the free and the home of the brave (ha)" is less saturated with security cameras than the motherland (UK). That's just because there's so much more area to cover.

Perhaps we're now the "land of the circumscribed and the home of the timid". If we're terrified, then the terrorists have accomplished their mission.

Don't mean to sound bitter, but I am.

It's a fine lens, I use it. With Kenko tubes it can't be beat!




(Thanks, George!)

I use an A 100mm Dental Macro with Kenko tubes (well built and have all contacts) with the K10D. I can go up to or past 1:1 with this rig, and the results are superb.

Great catch! That's a great shot!

Well, not to point the obvious, but if you're pointing the spot at anything, the meter thinks it's Zone V. Watch where you're pointing that thing!

Adobe finally released Camera Raw 3.7. So not only do the defaults match up properly with K10D DNG fies, it can read the PEF's as well.

Manual lenses have to be used in Manual mode (after all, they're manual lenses) but due to the lack of the cam that traces the aperture controller, you need to set a menu item to allow lenses that are not on A setting to fire the shutter, and you use the green button to take a light reading.

To do this properly, you need to set the green button to set the shutter speed in Manual mode.

Get used to it. Users of medium format and large format have dealt with this angle of view nonsense for years.

A 127mm lens is a normal lens on my RB67, it would be a short telephoto on a 645, a longer telephoto on a 35mm camera, and an even longer telephoto on the AOS-C sensor.

It's just that 35mm shooters have been dealing with only format for ages. Now we get to join the real world of photography, where focal length and angle of view are related to focal length in a more complex way.