You're going to struggle to get F2.0 or faster at any reasonable price. There's the FA77 F1.8 Limited, but maybe that's outside your budget.

At F2.8 or slower you'll have a lot more options. The SMC-A 100mm F4 macro is lovely, for instance, and quite often available second hand.

Well for one thing, I think it's far too short to serve both camps.

I haven't seen anything advanced for a long time, and some articles are neither one thing, nor the other.

Take your article, John, in the same issue, on setting up a digital workspace. I couldn't understand who it was aimed at at all - you mention three editing apps, one of which is 2002 vintage (is anyone still using this?), and two newer ones that are on the one hand very advanced, and on the other, bang up to date and fully featured. Yet you're still including instructions on how to use File > Open, and how to display image thumbnails using Windows folder options.

Someone that new to it all should be using something like Picasa, not one of the PS versions. And if they do want to learn and get into Elements or PS, such an article doesn't really give them anything.

I just don't understand where articles like this are pitched, sorry.

I don't mean to single you out, John, as I usually like your articles. But it's an example of the way PU Mag is perhaps trying to be too many things to too many people, and not really serving the Pentax enthusiasts any more, in this age of the internet.

I guess where I'm coming from is that for a mag that comes out four times a year, I want something to really look forward to, aimed at enthusiastic amateurs like myself, with some real meat in it that will keep me going for a while.

As I say, nothing wrong with beginners, or magazines for beginners.

But there are gazillions of places where material for beginners can be found.

Personally, I don't think that a magazine apparently dedicated to Pentax enthusiasts should be one of them, but that's just my view.

There are also sections in it that are positively perverse, in this day and age. Who on earth posts (or responds to) printed classified ads any more in magazines? Or for that matter, relies on a printed price list for accessories?

This sums it up, I think. PU Mag seems aimed at beginners. Nothing wrong with beginners, but by the time someone gets to the point of signing up to a magazine subscription, aren't they going to be a little beyond that?

From the 09/4 issue...

[quote="K-X review"] "ISO sensitivity determines how fast the sensor reacts to light, and the higher the number, the faster it reacts. The K-x has a range of ISO200 to ISO6400 which is a healthy range."
[/quote]Quite honestly, it doesn't get any more vacuous or beginnerish than this, and it just annoys me, especially as it's not even accurate.

I know this is just one example, but do I find myself frequently rolling my eyes at things like that. So not for me any longer, although the SRS and Pentax servicing discounts are worth having.

I've voted yes... with the proviso that all the other benefits remain included.

To be honest, I've let my PU sub lapse, because I don't find enough meat in the magazine articles.

From the glowing things people tend to say about it, I suspect I may be a lone voice here, but I often end up feeling that the articles are a bit lightweight, especially the camera reviews. I liked John's articles on lenses a few months back, but even then I suspected there he has a lot more in depth knowledge that didn't make it into print.

For half the price but the same benefits, a PDF that I'd keep (rather than a mag that I don't usually) would be more attractive, but even so, I wish that the content was in more depth.

I had an episode with dust not long ago. It had got suddenly much worse, so much so that I was avoiding taking pictures.

I got an Arctic Butterfly, and it was completely ineffective.

Then I got some fluid and swabs from CameraClean.co.uk, and the results were quite good.

You can see some before and after pics here; the crap on the sensor has been made more obvious by cranking up the contrast, but it was unusable for all intents and purposes.

Note that when I managed to introduce a large lump of dust that wasn't too stuck, the Arctic Butterfly worked fine, so it may be the best thing for the OP.

But for anything sticky, especially if it's been on there for a while, a wet clean is probably going to be the only way.

The other thing you need to consider is where you're going to put all these scans. If it's only a few hundred, then it's probably not much of an issue to back up the results (you *so* don't want to have to do it twice).

But with thousands, at 70MB per hi-res TIFF, you do need to think about it.

I ended up getting three 1TB disks, and sorted out a rational backup strategy for it all.

Looking at the dates on the TIFFs, I started on 23rd Sept, and the last one I did was on the 15th Nov last year.

In that time I scanned just over 2500 negs.

I really need to get the momentum back - I hadn't realised I'd had quite so much of a break.

I thought I was half way through, and then I found some more books of negs, so I'm only a quarter of the way through. I guess that dented my enthusiasm a bit.

Once I got into my stride, I could do a strip of four in about 7 minutes, very much 'feed and forget'. So a roll per hour is perfectly achievable if you really go at it.

Several years back I'd had a go with a mid-range Epson flat bed scanner, and the thing that completely put me off was all the dust and crap that inevitably got on the negs and ruined the scan, no matter how careful I was.

That alone is why I'd never go back to a non-dedicated scanner, especially if it didn't have the auto-scratch and spot removal (digital ICE on the Nikon scanners), which adds eons to the elapsed time if you want a decent result and have to do it manually.

There are really two issues here.

One is quality, and the other is the effort required to digitise a large number of negatives.

I agonised long and hard about this towards the end of last year, and eventually went for nearly the most expensive solution - a Nikon Coolscan 5000. I've blogged a little about my experiences to date, but I must confess I lost momentum a little when I discovered (after doing about 2000), that rather than 4000 negs to scan, it was closer to 10,000.

Ideally, I'd like to offer negative scanning as a service, to recoup a bit of the high cost of the scanner. But as a piece of kit, I can't imagine it being any easier or quicker to use, and the results are good.

I posted a few of the better ones here, but it's just a sample, not at all a technical review of the scanner's capabilities.

A very warm welcome to the forum from me.

It's a great pleasure to see a careful look at a subject that, if you've been following the debates about SR here, you may know is quite close to my heart, not least because of all the shockingly bad science and anecdotal non-evidence that abounds and shapes people's views so easily.

I note your broad conclusions with interest, and when I get a chance, I'll read it in detail.

My particular hobby-horse, which I investigated for myself some time ago with the K10D, is the assertion from numerous quarters that the absence of shake itself causes the SR circuitry to cause unwanted sensor movement during the exposure.

I found no evidence of this in my experiments, which were nowhere near as quantitative as yours, but nevertheless careful.

I'd be interested in your comments on this.