Yes, all true. Just more of the creeping loss of privacy and control that's endemic these days.

I also notice that in the T&C they say, effectively, "we won't actually misuse your stuff, but if we get hacked, that's just tough".

I know it doesn't make a practical difference to things, but it just feels a little 'not quite good enough' to me.

I do not subscribe to the view that as long as you have nothing to hide, there's no problem with surveillance, so I don't at all accept this as an argument:

If it's hydrophilic, it attracts water**.

So why is that ROR product aimed at removing residual oil?

Has anyone here actually used it? TBH, I don't think I'd take the chance - as JR said, it sounds more like snake oil. And I'm still rolling my eyes over the 1.5 stops claim. See:

IMO, an advert for a lens cleaning fluid that makes ludicrous claims is not at all off-topic, if the thread title is 'Lens Cleaning'.

And I still don't see the relevance of any alleged porosity or hydrophilicity, if Pentax apply 7 coats of something that presumably bonds very tightly to the glass.

Edit:

Incidentally, water in the air that gets bound to the glass is something that you can simply do nothing about. At room temperature and ordinary levels of humidity, dried glass readsorbs (sic) water so quickly that to all intents and purposes, it's always present unless you take special precautions to exclude it.

There's simply no possibility that you could buy a brand new lens and have it somehow drier than it would be after a few weeks. The notion that the presence of water molecules on/in the structure of the glass is undesirable and somehow affects the optics is similarly without basis.

__________________________________
** I can vouch for that from direct experience, BTW - in my days as a chemist I often used to do anhydrous reactions, which involved baking the glassware at high temperature for several hours, and allowing it to cool in a desiccator under vacuum, which was then refilled with argon prior to handling the glass. Since argon is denser than air, the idea was to get a stopper into the flask before the argon could be displaced by moist air. Solvents used in such anhydrous reactions also had to be dried, but that's another story.

True.

PhotoBucket, for instance, says:
[quote="Photobucket"]If you remove your Content from the Site .... we might still have it stored in backup files or on servers, and we are not responsible for sites on which it was shared before it was marked "private." Also, we will retain it if needed for any legal reason.[/quote]The public link to a Photobucket image does, however, stop working if someone deletes their image from the site.

This isn't true of the PU Gallery image, which still works.

So anyone that bookmarks a link to someone's gallery image can continue to use that link even after the image has been removed from the gallery. I don't think this is really right, and I bet it's not what people would understand from paragraph 23 in the terms. I also don't think we should have to contact PU directly to request a deletion in order for the link to stop working.

I agree that it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but telling us in the T&C that the image is kept on the server is not the same as telling us that the public URL is still active.

I do feel that it's not really consistent with what I'd imagine as the highest standard of data management.

The Pentax 18-135 and 17-70 are both very quiet.

Much quieter, in fact, than the little 'bzzt' the K-5 makes when you switch it on.

I've had these only for a few weeks in total, so I can't comment on how reliable they are if unused for a long time.

Obviously the 18-135 will be more 'general purpose' simply because of its greater reach, but careful of the edge sharpness.

I've just had a look in the T&C for the gallery, and in fairness, they do make this clear:

[quote="T&C"]23. When an image is deleted from the gallery, we keep the image on our server. You can request that this be totally deleted by contacting our office.[/quote]I'd still like to know why, and for how long the image is kept, however.

There are actually two taken with the lens in the linked album above, together with the same scenes at 50mm. They're not exactly works of art, however!

I should say that following ChrisM8's PM, sale is pending, though.

For text, it's normal for forum software to allow this kind of auditing, and I think most people would be aware of it, or at least not surprised by it.

I think uploaded pictures are a little different though.


I suppose if someone posted a picture in the gallery, and it, or the comments violated the terms, retaining the picture might provide context to the mods in their deliberations. Seems a little tenuous to me though, if that's the rationale.

If I delete an image from PhotoBucket, it's no longer available in any forum link, and you'd think the same arguments would apply. Does the forum software take copies of images served up via 3rd party hosting sites?

It does make me less inclined to post to the gallery, and more inclined to link to a public album as others do.

Not sure how to advertise this - since I'm not sure how much to ask for it. I think it's worth a lot more than the fungusy one that went today, and a lot less than this one that some chancer is asking 300 quid for.

I bought mine second hand for £125 from Chris@SRS a couple of years ago, and I haven't really used it enough to justify keeping it.

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/eBay%20photos/Sigma%20600mm%20F8%20Mirror/IMGP3134.jpg[/IMG]

There are more pictures of it here, and to the best of my knowledge it's mechanically and optically fine.

Front and rear glass is fine, there are a few specks of dust inside, a few tiny paint chips on the tripod collar, one on the hood and one on the front cap. There's also what looks like a tiny (less than a millimeter across) blemish in the surface of the mirror that you see if you look in through the front.

Apart from that, all good. Smooth, precise focusing, and with careful handling, good results.

Included is the screw-on hood, standard Sigma-branded rear cap, and metal front cap (which does tend to slip off, but in transit the hood can be reversed and slides over the lens, keeping the cap securely on).

Also the filter holder and the Skylight 1B filter, both perfect. I never had the coloured ones, or a box so I can't include them.

I'd appreciate some guidance, or, failing that, some offers

I'll put it on the bay next Thursday if there's insufficient interest here, but if there is, the way I work is that I describe and photograph things as accurately as I can, but if I've missed something that materially affects the deal then I'm more than happy to do the refund thing. And if I've cocked up you shouldn't pay for my mistake so if it came down to it I'd pay the postage both ways. Shipping would be by RMSD, or if you're local, collection in person would be fine.

I have no personal experience of the 16-50, but no Pentax star lens has any business being 'a weak lens in the line-up'.

How can this be true of Pentax SMC lenses? SMC was 7 coats according to Bojidar - how can it possibly be still porous?

How is this evidence for pores? I can believe it's evidence for it being initially cleaner than it is after weeks of use, but pores??? Really?