I'd heard about the problems with the hood, but I doubt I'll use it very often. If it becomes an issue I'll probably pick up something like this.

Good to know about the teleconverters, not that I'll be able to afford either any time soon

Exactly why I had settled on the 70mm in the end. Supposed to be sharp from f/2.8 where the Tamron 90mm isn't quite as good until f/4.

But I've managed to source the Sigma from samson51 for nearer £200 than £300 (same as the last one sold for), so I'm set!

Should it not suit me, however, I may end up trying out the Tamron after all. Or even the 50mm macro that Defragged mentioned.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

Thanks for taking the time to post a link!

I'm intrugued by the idea, but I don't know if 50mm would be quite right.. I've tried a standard 50mm on a mid-sized tube but it didn't really speak to me.

Most of my close focus shots have been at 70mm. I have a Pentax A 35-70mm f/4 and was always using it at 70. Same with the Sigma 17-70mm and the Tamron 28-75mm I used to have - always at the long end. The minimum focus distance on the 17-70mm was so short I was forever brushing it against leaves and flowers.

I had been considering getting the Tamron 90mm originally, but decided the 70mm might be a better all-purpose solution.

On the other hand, the price is certainly right

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it anyway, in case nothing else pans out!

Thanks again

As per the title, I'm looking for a Sigma 70mm Macro with pricing somewhere nearer the £200 mark than the £300 mark

I'll be using it more for flora than fauna, so if anyone has suggestions of something similarly suitable in that price range I would be glad to hear of it.

Thanks!

Not really a long-term solution, but there's always these

Ah, right... I happened to notice them earlier and remembered your post. I thought you would have seen them, but figured I'd mention them, just in case.

Ffordes has two second-hand Bigmas at the moment, £499 and £549, in case you haven't seen them.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Frogfish!

I read the manual beginning to end before I even took the camera out of the box, so I thought maybe I missed it or just plain didn't understand which setting it was related to.

I'm afraid the icon here on the playback screen is the DPOF icon, which is just for printing images (as far as I know).

The icons I have available are as follows: Image rotation, Digital filter, Resize, Cropping, Protect, Slideshow, Save as manual WB, RAW development, Index, Movie editing, DPOF, Save destination. In fact, it looks identical to page 208 of the manual.

Thank you, David! This works in as much as none of the images rotate, so that landscapes stay landscapes and portraits stay landscapes, which isn't quite the same as it used to be, but it achieves the same goal of making the most of the screen's available space

Sadly, I think the 'image comparison' function (page 235/241 of the K5 manual) has been removed. It's a shame, because there's probably a dozen features on the camera I never use, but I used that one all the time.

Oh, well. Thanks again guys!

There were two often-used features on my K7 that appear to be missing from my new K5II.

Firstly, the display orientation of photos in playback mode doesn't change when I rotate the camera. For instance, for a photo shot in portrait mode, I could rotate the camera to portrait and the display would also rotate, causing the picture to fill the screen. With the K5II the image doesn't rotate no matter how I hold the camera and I'm stuck with a vertical shot on a horizontal screen. I used to do this to show people their pictures but it doesn't seem to work any longer.

Secondly, also in playback, if you pressed the down arrow, there would be an option to display two images side-by-side. You could zoom in to various magnifications on either image or do both at the same time. I often used this to compare noise levels, sharpness, depth of field, etc.

Have these two features been removed completely or am I just looking in the wrong place?

Thanks

Both very nice lenses.. The 35-70mm is great on tubes as well.

There's a 35-70mm ending on ebay tonight at 8:44pm BST, should that be of interest to you.