Ok, so in pure optical terms, the Limiteds are better than the Stars?

And the Stars are better than everything else?

I'm just trying to get an idea of what to expect from the thing, since it is quite likely to be my next lens (well, that or the 55-300). I can imagine the non-optical qualities very easily, but never having had a top-notch lens I find the optical qualities a lot harder to gauge without an expensive experiment.

Is your impression that its 'pretty good' is as good as earlier stars?

Hopefully the optics justify the 'star' designation, too.

Though I've not heard people raving about the optical qualities of the thing the way they do with the earlier star lenses (and indeed with the DA 50-135). For me this is a bit of a worry, I have to confess.

I'd love to have the F2.8, but paying nearly £500 for lens, it needs to be a bit special.

My brother's got one, and it wasn't till after I'd had the '10 for a while that I had a play with it. The slowness and tiny screen made a big impression.
Also, though, it struck me how all the controls on the '10 are very similar to the *istD, but they feel sooooo much nicer.

There's been some nice design/development work in the intervening years.

To answer the question, though...

My fave 5 at the moment (out of what I have, not the ideal, which would be a *-studded cast) are:

Sigma 10-20
FA 28-200
Sigma-A 400mm F5.6 AF (deceptively capable)
SMC-A 100mm F4 Macro
SMC-A 50mm F1.7

I suspect that might just be the Canon.

I had a play with the Pentax one on my K10D in Chris's shop - I bought the Sigma 10-20 instead in the end - and the focus was acceptably quick, comparable with a lot of Pentax-fit lenses, but not stunning by any measure.

Nothing wrong with the pictures though. The well-documented barrel distortion at the wide end was very apparent if there were straight lines near the edge of the frame, but apart from that I'm sure it's capable of very good results, and the convenience of the thing is outstanding - especially since the SR compensates quite a lot for its slowness (not on Canon, though )

I don't have one, but if you want to base a buying decision even partly on photos taken with it, it would be helpful if you could suggest what sort of photos you're looking for.

Considering the zoom range, it is supposed to be very good, as is the Pentax equivalent, to which it's very similar.

There have been several threads with pictures taken with both of them, IIRC, so a search would probably give you much of what you want.

To capture the wing detail, perhaps. But to capture the moment, I'd disagree. If you watch birds pulling off difficult landings often enough, you realise that it's just as much a critical phase of flight as it is for human pilots, and they do have to work quite hard to do it well in difficult conditions such as this. You've captured that sense very well.

I think these are both terrific. And to coin someone else's phrase, they're sharp where it counts.

Did you resize first before uploading, or allow PB to do the resizing?

No idea.

But here's another one, not displayed as well as yours, ending tomorrow, that might give you an idea.

It has a different head from yours though.

Yep, no argument there.
Yes, I'd probably withdraw the 'absolutely, definitely' in the light of that. It was strange, but it doesn't seem to have damaged the camera. And the manufacturer's warning is not about damage.

But I'm always glad to review my opinions based on new evidence.

Thank you.

Sorry if it seemed like that, it's nothing personal. Unfounded claims based on lack of evidence drives me nuts. There's a lot of it about, and people believe, and then act on, all kinds of nonsense.

Well, this is true if whatever you do, also excludes other reasons someone might get better results without SR.

I do accept that my experiments do not show anything about the behaviour of the camera when there is more naturally present shake than you get with a tripod, but less than the average hand-held shooter.

If you're somewhere in between these, and there's something funny about the SR system's response to that particular level of shake, then yes, my tests do not reveal that, nor can they.

However, what you haven't done, is anything that is described in enough detail to be repeatable by an independent investigator. Further, whatever results you've described are from experiments that are notoriously difficult to interpret (hand-held, with all its natural variation; wide angles, where shake is less evident anyway; and wide apertures, presumably in low light with the 50mm F1.4 you were talking about, where it's difficult to isolate shake from blur).

You're making extraordinary claims. This means that you need extraordinarily good evidence to back them up.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but without the evidence, I'm afraid you're just another one of the many, that make wild and implausible speculative comments about the performance of their equipment.

And usually it's their technique, not the equipment. Sometimes it isn't, of course. It might not be in this case, indeed I incline to the view that you're more likely to be seeing something, since you have a track record here of creativity and inventiveness, which I respect.

But we need evidence, not faith.