Sigma also made a 600mm F8 Mirror lens and I have even heard a rumer that a company somewhere made an autofocus mirror lens! I have been looking for the Sigma 600 but can't find a PK fit one yet, there do seem to be a lot of other examples of mirror lenses on eBay, but I suspect that these are poor quality. I believe that the Sigma 600 new was about £350 and was considered a good mirror lens.

I have the Sigma 18-200 and I have not been disappointed with it, I bought it to replace the kit lens and give me a general usage lens that was not going to brake the bank. I compaired it with the Tamron and went for the Sigma because it had snapier and quiter focus. It also works very well with my Kenro 1.5 teleconverter.

I have used my K10D confidently in rain and with the DA* 50-135 with the hood attached I didn't even get a drop on the lens! The lens is also coated to repel water to prevent droplets forming. On several occations, I have been the only one with an SLR out in the rain! Optically you can't beet the DA* lense and I think they compare favourably with Nikon lense but are cheeper, in part as the shake reduction does not have to be in camera. Also, the extra battery grip is also sealed and with two batteries running a K20D, your qouted shoots are in excess of 1400!

I once did a search to see how many 'Normal' photo tripods could support this lens with a 1kg+ camera, there were only 2 I seem to remember!

What about this?

It must be the hood - £13 for the hood, that will be it!

I have the M version of this lens, haven't got round to trying it yet though.

Thanks. A coligue at work has commented that it looks a bit like a 17th centry masters painting!

Just though I would post these two images for comments:
Image 1


Processed



The first image was taken on my K10 with a 50mm 1.4 A lens. The only available light was from the landing light through the open door. It was so dark I had significant trouble focussing. However, this was taken at F1.4 and ISO1600. What is amazing, to me anyway, is that this was taken hand held at 1/4 second exposure.

The second image had a bit of colour correction, noise reduction, sharpening and levels to brighten the image correctly. WB was origionally set to tungston - the first shot I took on Auto and then chose the right setting using the WB preview function. I know the processing could be better, but I am only using Paintshop noise reduction on an 8 bit JPG, but is shows the leven of detail achieved. I wonder how the K20 would have coped at ISO3200

Now I could never have done this with a film camera! By the way, these were shot in Jpg, if I had used RAW (:roll it would have been even better!

I have two of these! I can't tell much difference between them and don't have them to hand so can't tell you the make. They are fun, but the picture quality is not the best - distortion towards the edge of the field and some obvious CA. However, mine have a macro attachment which makes for some very interesting closeup shots! I think the magnification on mine is 0.45.

I have been looking at selling one. PM me if you are interested in more details.

Go for it! It is by far my favourite lens!

Unless you wait for the 60-250! That's twice the price though!