The M200 is fetching a lot more than that at the moment.

One went a couple of weeks ago for £80, and I've just sold one for £60.

'Pollywog' is north-American for 'tadpole'.

And there's a song with a chorus that goes 'singing polly wolly doodle all the day'

Only Don would put the two together

You might contact this guy, although I realise he's not exactly on your doorstep.

He fixed the iris on a Sigma 400mm AF lens I had last year, charged me £40 including parts which he happened to have despite Sigma themselves telling me that it was no longer repairable. He's local to me, so postage costs aren't a factor.

Genuine bloke, very decent, AFAICT from one encounter.

6, according to this.

Anyone know what it's like compared with the FAJ 75-300?

I had one of those for a while, too, and never really got on with it - at the long end, again, I found it most disappointing.

I'm reasonably confident my problems with both those long zooms wasn't shake, BTW - I have no problems with my 400s.

That's great to hear - I had an FA 80-320 briefly and I was most unimpressed, especially at the long end.

But the long end of such a zoom is precisely what needs to be good - otherwise there's no point having it.

I've only read this thread from the OP, but there's nothing in it to suggest which camera he's using. So we don't know whether 28 is wide, or 18 is.

Second, you can pick any two from good, versatile, fast, and cheap. Occasionally, you might get good, fast and cheap with, for instance, a 50mm M 1.7, but that's hardly what he's looking for,

If you want versatile at all (as in superzoom), you can't have fast.

I think he needs to sort out what his real priorities are, because he isn't going to find his ideal.

Also, motorsport and wet misty mountains aren't going to happen on the same day all that often. Does he really need just one lens?

I don't buy this explanation really.

For the not-panning case, there's no question - a bright bit on the rotating subject will describe the 'Spirograph' shape as we see in JGAR's shots.

If the panning is perfect, the wheel is rotating in the same place on the sensor, so if the exposure is long enough the dark bits will blend to grey with the light bits. If it isn't long enough, the spokes will look like spokes, but blurred.

I'm beginning to think that the original effect is most like the not-panning case, although it looks different enough for me still not to be at all sure.

If this is true, you wouldn't need SR to produce the effect - effectively the wheel is causing its own strobe effect (ie a flash only in certain orientations).

If this is the same as what amoringello meant, then I agree, but I didn't really understand what he was driving at.

I do find this a lot more plausible than SR - the freqency at which it shook the sensor back and forth would have to be the same as the number of spokes going past per second, as well as leaving it stationary for long enough to get each successive 'freeze' and this is too far-fetched for me.

Nevertheless, for an exposure as long as 1/6s, the whole frame is exposed for a long time (approx 30x as long) in comparison with the time it takes for the curtains to go past.

So the amount of exposure difference between the top and the bottom is very small. I don't think it's enough to account for this.

And in any case, effects due to the curtain moving slowly cause circles to become ovals. Not at all what we're seeing here, I think. But I don't know what was causing it.

Antilock braking is another far-fetched idea that occurs to me that would cause a strobing effect