Are you asking for someone to offer you one for sale, or to suggest one to buy?

New or second-hand?

300mm at the long end? Or somewhere in the middle?

I bought a used Pentax SMC 75-300 FAJ for about £100 (can't remember the exact number) and I've been very pleased with it so far.

Can't be any more help than that, sorry.

Talking about filters, I'd like to apply for the "Tuesday muppet award".

I've put a UV filter and a thicker lens cap on the Pentax 400mm I acquired recently, and I was just thinking, hmm I wonder if it still fits in the case.

So I slipped it into the case, and lo and behold, the top wouldn't shut - by about a quarter of an inch.

Damn and blast, I thought, and was just about to take the filter off again.

Then I realised...

... and turned the focus ring the rest of the way.

I tried a few comparisons - with and without a UV filter - not long after I got the K10D, and I couldn't tell the difference.

Not that I'm saying there isn't a difference, but I couldn't see it, admittedly with the 18-55. Maybe flare would be worse with a filter on. I'd be interested in any facts about what sort of shots are adversely affected, and how much.

It is interesting to hear about the shards problem - it is a bit of a worry, I must say.

The only time I ever dropped a lens, touch wood, it was my trusty Sigma A 28-200, and it was getting the camera out of the car.

The filter was absolutely fine, as was the front element. Ripped the mount out of the lens though. Sigma fixed it for me, quite cheaply IIRC, and it's been fine ever since. Couldn't part with it now, although it probably isn't optically all that brilliant.

Very likely. Not much DOF, even at small apertures.

Yep.

No need to trade the K10D in for a Canon then just yet

Cheers Matt

Fair enough. It's not supposed to be an exercise in lighting - I intentionally used flat direct diffuse light to avoid the "side lighting hence increased contrast" effect that Matt mentioned - I wanted to see what the actual detail was like, without making it look artificially sharper by increasing the contrast.

The glittery reflections are a drawback though - maybe an angle would have been better to avoid that, although there were so many slightly convex surfaces on it that it would have been hard to avoid them all. My own impression was that it's very faithful to how it was.

I've eaten the pineapple now, so I can't repeat it

Just for reassurance, please could a few have a gander at these, and tell me whether it looks out of focus, as was suggested earlier?

http://www.mjda.org/IMGP4431-fromPEF.jpg

http://www.mjda.org/IMGP4431-fromPEF-usm95.3.3.jpg

The only difference between the two is USM (amount 95, radius 3, threshold 3).

If they are, and it's not shake, then there's something wrong with either the camera or the lens.

Interesting suggestion. I don't think so. The camera didn't think so, either.

It was a long exposure, so it's possible there was some shake.

But I wonder if we're just used to seeing things unnaturally sharpened.

I'll do another version that is sharpened a bit, see what you think.

Edit: here it is:

http://www.mjda.org/IMGP4431-fromPEF-usm95.3.3.jpg

Not expertly done - I don't have the skills; just USM 95,3,3.

To me this one appears a lot sharper (you have to look at it full size, not resized to fit the screen). But if you look closely, there's actually no additional detail visible, just more contrast between elements of detail that were already there.

Do you still think it looks OOF? If so, then I can't comment, and will have to leave it to someone more experienced than I to offer an opinion.

Here's a picture I took of a pineapple.

http://www.mjda.org/IMGP4431-fromPEF.jpg

It doesn't exactly have the "ahhhhhhhh" factor of the lion cub and its mum, but if it's detail you want, I think it has a fair amount.

I took it with the K10D, and the A-series 100mm macro from a distance of a few feet. 3s, F19, ISO 100.

All it's had done to it is conversion of RAW to JPG. No sharpening at all. It's the whole frame, uncropped, and it's the full 2Mb JPG, not subject to the auto-resizing that a lot of the online galleries do.

Have a look at it full size: I won't be able to host it there for long.

Doubtless in the hands of an expert photoshopper, the edges could be hardened up to give the appearance of greater sharpness, but that is not the same thing as detail.

Edit: Note also, incidentally, that if you just look at the frame, rendered by the browser however it thinks fit, it doesn't look anything at all, really, in terms of sharpness. But click on it (in Firefox, don't know about IE) to see it full size, and everything's there.

Apologies for the edit. Seems I was a touch hasty with the Canon specs.

The EXIF data for the picture says "Canon EOS-1D Mark 2", and when I said:

I was reading a spec sheet for the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II

My apologies - Pete's quite right with the spec.

However, the 700mm lens also recorded by the EXIF data would get you awful close, and show a lot of detail.

And my point about research still stands. All you've done is picked a sharp picture and posted it. You haven't told us anything at all about the nature of your research.

If you're doing research, why don't you tell us EXACTLY what it is you've researched?

Aim, Method, Results, Conclusion, for example.

So that what you say carries some weight.

For instance, define with some precision what you mean by image quality, and in particular,

Otherwise it's all very subjective and selective, and you run the risk of another George special.