Hi,

I am going on the Sunday also..I live in Walsall, not so very far away.

Yes the NEC is a bit crap, but it is FAR better than anything London has to offer and the vast majority of the UK hate travelling to London due to the dreadful roads, awful roadusers and ignorant people who just shove past anyone in their way, which is my experience of London over the last 25 years. (A friend lived there)

This is in reality the biggest and best UK photo show of the year, so If you do want to check out any new, or even older gear then this is the place to go, in fact even more so now there are so few camera shops with so little stock inside them. I have been for the last three years and been surprised at the amount of used gear on sale.

cheers Steve.M.

Anyone for meeting on the Pentaxuser stand at 12.00? or 1.00?

Hi,

Yes, you now have effectively a 75mm lens, but it now also still has the 'larger' depth of field of the 50mm lens it still is...so if you like selective focus effects with wide apertures one of the downsides of digital is about to hit home..

cheers Steve.

Hi John,

Sorry everyone..this is a little off topic..

re "he did better than Ivor Matanle did when covering older ranges"

I believe that the main research Mr Matanle does for his AP articles is to search the web...so all the incorrect 'facts' and nonsense that are splashed all over the web simply get repeated in his articles. A Contax RTS article by him last year contained so many schoolboy errors I emailed him with the correct 'facts'..he was grateful...

The Damien review also contains non-facts, which is why I hold little faith in any magazine reviews. He slates the Contax N digital, when mentioning it had/has the same sensor due to go into the ill-fated Pentax Full frame, but maybe he should talk to the Contax N fans who still swear by the N digital, who are getting such good results they are willing to still pay £3000 for them..

cheers Steve.

Hi Chris,

Really the short answer is NO. These price guides that do exist are well out of date the moment they come to print, let alone some time later.

The camera market is now, due to digital, far more fluid than it used to be and far more fluid than the car market, making any lens or camera price guides fairly pointless.

There are, or were, several USA guys with ebay price guides on the web, but they used ebay.com for their prices, they were all specialised guides, one was for Canon FD, one for Olympus OM , one for Pentax K etc and they used to be useful, because the ebay prices about 3-6 years ago were fairly steady, but more recently these guys stopped keeping track of prices since they became increasingly heywire. So the ebay price guides left on the web are hopelessly out of date now.

The best guide are the ad's in AP, since most of the dealers in there (though not all) have a fair grip on what the 'going rate' is for most items. You can look at the recently 'completed items' on ebay, but this only goes back about 4-6weeks and bearing in mind these are auction prices, they can vary wildly at times. They also vary between the UK site, the USA site and others.

Pentax lens prices have kept changing over the last 4 years. I buy and sell MF camera items for a hobby and have kept track of ebay.co.uk prices all this time.

Lots of Pentax lenses were easy to find only 3 years ago, even the 85/1.4 A* the 300/4 A* the SMC 85/1.8 K and other fairly scarce lenses USED to be regularly for sale on ebay, but over the last two years this has changed. Many of the scarcer and more desirable lenses are now being held onto and are VERY hard to find. The increased market penetration of Pentax DSLR's has made this situation occur, with more users wanting the older and well-thought of MF lenses.

cheers Steve.

Hi,

If I listed all the cameras I have owned and used, this post would take several days to read, so I will just mention the nicest cameras..in no particular order..

Canon F-1n..the original one..superb beast. Nikon F2AS..ditto, but I have always prefered the F-1. Most recently, the Contax ST & RX are without doubt the nicest cameras I have ever used, but I have now moved to the Leica R7, which must have the best viewfinder of any SLR.

I tried the Pentax LX for a while, but it just did not match any of the above...shame, since the K lenses are sooo good.

cheers Steve.

Hi,

I have read this Sigma issue several times before, but never seen the same issue with Tamron lenses. One of the 'joys' of AF cameras and 3rd party lenses, just one of the reasons I avoid both. I also believe John only buys Pentax lenses...

cheers Steve.M.

Hi,

Jonathan..PLEASE please name and shame the shop.

AND..please return to the shop, ask to see the manager and tell him exactly what the 'assistant' said. Be totally factual and calm. It really is about time that dealers like this and their poor staff are shamed. Also after you have done this, if you do not get a satisfactory answer from the manager for the persons total ignorance, then please contact the head office and supply their customer service manager with the info.

I am all for mentioning this on a froum like this, but this really needs taking up directly with the dealer involved. I would also inform Pentax UK.

cheers Steve.

Hiya,

There is an incredibly arrogant and aggressive member on the AP forum, who also happens to be one of their dubious moderators.

He is always telling everyone off for various things and yet insists on spelling cast with an 'e' on the end so it ends up as caste..

cheers

Hi Folks,

Hi Joshua..this reply is mostly for you. Your guesswork is very near the mark.

The only Pentax I still have is a istD which is use almost entirely with a Sigma EX 50mm f2.8 macro lens for web shots and product shots on a small table top daylight 'studio'...the word studio is a little grand.

For all my main snapping I use film SLR's..either Leica R or Nikon F and formerly Contax. I shoot the following types of 'work' ..urban, especially landscape, architecture, plants, flowers, interiors, transport, landscape, macro and lots of abstracts which would loosely be termed 'pictorial' or 'fine art' work. My girlfriend often calls my work 'weird stuff'.

I trained as a photographer when I was 21 full time at college and ended up as a pro studio photographer shooting mainly large format advertising work (although I left this years ago)...so I have in my blood the ethos of slow, methodical and very considered photo taking.

After I left the pro world I did not touch a camera at all for over 10 years! but slowly got back into it and for the last 7 years or so just shoot for my own pleasure, as well as buying & selling camera gear as a hobby which pays for any gear I want, so my photography does not cost me anything.

I have never liked the plastic lightweight feel of AF lenses nor do I like the AF of cameras..I much prefer total control over this, I also actually find it faster using an MF lens, as I often have main subjects close to the lens, or often off-set. The build quality and feel of MF lenses also makes AF lenses feel the cheap cousin.

Likewise I have never much liked zooms, I think they make you lazy. I often see people with zooms simply stand in the same place, with the same viewpoint and just zoom back & forth to frame their shot. Primes make you look harder and move around..you see things differently...and I think they make you more creative also.

I also like to use differential focus effects with lenses wide open or near to it, so this is another downside of the APS sensors for me..I often want less depth of field, not more, which the APS size gives.

so you may see my point of view more clearly now re my OP.

cheers Steve.

Hiya Golf,

Yep I know what Nikon apparently said some time ago..thing is though, at the end of the day Nikon are just a big business..and do you believe all that is said by big companies...I certainly do not.

Bear in mind that just a few weeks ago Leica were saying there was nothing wrong with their new M8...and within a week or two they are recalling them all due to three distinct defects..

..don't believe what big companies say..it is often just to suit some particular agenda they have at any given time. There are heavy rumours within people close to Nikon that they have several working prototypes of full frame DSLR's. Indeed I would be shocked if they did not have..

cheers Steve.