It may be the printing on the new lens, but it looks as though there's a touch of camera-shake on that shot with the 55mm. It could be that there is a little 'ghosting' of the numbers in real life.

Dan

Yes, a Pro-Centre...

http://www.pentax.co.uk/en/region/TE9ORE9O/pro_centres.html#TE9ORE9O

Dan

Thought it might have been, it had a look that was very familiar...

My *istD needed a wet clean every couple of weeks if not more. My K10D has only ever needed a rocket blower every now and again, it's much better at shrugging off the dirt than the D was.

Dan

I can't help but take this sort of statement as a challenge, and I go and look at some photos... Actually, most of yours seem pretty clean, but that may be because of your liking for wide apertures. A couple of your pier shots show a black dot on the left hand side, but the 'Private Property' shot on the Red Bubble site is littered with dust-spots, although don't know when you took that one.

I meet many people who claim their sensors are clean, and that they never need cleaning. I haven't seen one yet that didn't prove them wrong.

Dan

I think this may be as much due to technology bringing the price of design of this sort of lens down to a more 'consumer' level (the 31mm Limited is an AL ED lens, designed for film), but it certainly pushed the process along once people could easily inspect their images for distortion and CA at such high magnifications.

Dan

I'd have to disagree with some of this, based on my experience at Gigrin Farm, but also because, depending on the way you're shooting the wildlife, 300mm can be plenty long enough. Certainly 300+TC should cover most decent encounters.

If someone's serious about wildlife photography, then field craft will get the shots much better than a long lens. For instance, I 'like' Andy Rouse on Facebook, and he posted that the Little Owls he's photographing at the moment are now completely happy in his presence, so much so that the mum of the family was sat 6 feet from his car, and he didn't have a lens with him that focused close enough to get her. His most used lens for these is the 600mm, but that's on a full frame Nikon. He's often using the 100-400mm too for things like Bullfinches etc.

I don't pretend to be a wildlife photog, and my shots of animals and birds are mainly fortuitous encounters.

For the sort of photos Mecrox describes in his original post, I would think anything up to 300mm would be fine, and the 50-135 would probably be ideal.

Dan

Just a little correction - aspherical lenses have been around for much longer than that. For instance: http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/lenses/primes/ultra-wide/K15f3.5-i.html

Dan

Thoramay, are you aware the site doesn't work properly in Internet Explorer? In Lifeyo's FAQs is states "Lifeyo works best with Firefox, Safari or Chrome. We're working hard to get Internet Explorer supported in the next few weeks."

Seeing as a large proportion of web users use IE, this isn't ideal. Maybe it will change in the next few weeks, maybe that message has been there for 4 months already...

Dan

A 70-200mm f/2.8 with a 1.4x teleconverter will be an f/4 combo, giving 280mm at the long end. I think Whelmed meant long end rather than wide end, as he's contemplating the 70-200 or 100-300 range.

Dan

Polariser for me, very frequently used, IR too, but very rarely, especially now with the K10D. I've got an ND grad which sees occasional use.

Don't forget the polariser is good for so much more than just darkening blue skies, try it with foliage, even on a cloudy day - it can make colours so much richer. Toadstools too, and lots of macro shots if you're not worried about the shutter speed (i.e. stationary subjects when you're using a tripod).

Dan