Nope, aperture is the same as any other M series lens. It's basically an M 35-70mm f2.8-3.5 but with constant f2.8 and the battery/motor housing underneath.

I haven't handled the lens but I do have a rather battered ME-F (keeping as if I can find a tidy dead one I can refurbish it). The focus confirm isn't really as good as the split focus screen for getting it right quickly...

If you mean the one-off 35-70mm f2.8 with the battery pack hung under the lens barrel then no, it'll only auto focus with an ME-F. It works like an M series zoom on everything else.

Not entirely sure which!

I think it's a case of people getting married in their 30s rather than 20s now, and the ones I know well enough to expect an invitation aren't likely to be booking a venue in the near future. I only seem to know either people who aren't likely to be getting married for some time or people who already were by the time I met them!

Amazon can be very odd on occasion. Items drop vertically in price for a week or so then pop back up again. I always suspect that they take the attitude of "It's been in the warehouse for too long, drop the price to just above cost and shift it".

I do think people expect more from digital than they did from film.

In film days they were happy with well exposed/composed/focussed shots which looked as natural as possible. Most of the work was done in-camera.

Now with the rise of photo manipulation packages they all want to look like the airbrushed airheads in the waste-of-paper magazines. A lot more effort for the photographer in converting their realistic shots to "perfect" portraits which hide any blemishes!

If I ever get invited to a wedding as a guest I'm taking the MX and the 40mm pancake. Should be a good conversation starter and decent mono images will be very different to anything else friends of the couple would be likely to produce!

As far as I know the eyecups have no glass in them?

You could therefore clean it with warm soapy water by hand, rinse, dry somewhere warm and refit to the camera.

If you've got dirt on the viewfinder glass then it can be removed with a microfibre cloth just as with a dirty lens. If it's on the inside then it's slightly more complicated, and unless you're happy taking cameras apart it's a professional job.

After looking at those I'm beginning to think that, as with politics, you should only employ people who don't volunteer to do the job!

I would never want to shoot weddings professionally simply due to the stress. While you can take every reasonable precaution in terms of kit, venue, etc there's always Murphy's Law waiting to trip you up, only this time it'll ruin the record of what remains one of the biggest days of anyone's life.

Keep an eye on ebay for a tidy but dead SF-series to take a replacement from? They often come up cheaply body-only.

I think the SF7/SFX/SFXn used the same eyecup.

Off topic, but I'm glad to see the current owner is still using it!

Cameras and lenses are made for use. The only difference finding something rare or minty makes to me is that I use it even more carefully.

I think this illustrates my point about the difference between photography as an art and photography for recording events. These shots are now a little piece of history, the cars, clothes, and often buildings seen here no longer exist as they did then. They don't "work" as photographic art, but for a social historian there's plenty of evidence about '80s Britain here.

I do worry if digital photography will mean less is recorded rather than more. You don't tend to destroy the negatives where the subject moved or the composition just didn't work as expected, so they remain as a record despite you considering them duds. Meanwhile I know I tend to get rid of any digital image which didn't work pretty rapidly, unless it's a really unusual or interesting subject.

I'm still annoyed that I didn't manage to photograph a local factory before it was demolished and replaced with a Tesco. The building lacked any architectural merit and won't be missed, but it was a part of the landscape for decades and now nothing remains. Give it a couple of decades and just some well-taken views of the building, its demolition, and the construction of the new supermarket would be of historical value.