Listed as out of stock on the SRS website, but they've got one listed on ebay...

Pentax SMC 31mm f:1.8

...and it's black.

Dan

Perhaps you should have said "I want my ultimate macro lens".

Dan

Sorry I mentioned the 200mm now.

That does say you want the ultimate macro lens (twice), and doesn't say you definitely want a 50mm one. The bit about the minimum focus distance seems to say you don't mind whether you're close or distant from your subject.

I brought up the 200mm because of the comments on Stan's Photography Website, comments like:

"A truly brilliant lens and it is indeed my candidate for the best pentax lens ever."

"the 200/4 Macro impresses me as having the highest resolution of any lens I've ever seen, from macro distance (1:1 magnification) all the way out to infinity."

"I personally have never used a lens as sharp, at any distance from macro range to infinity"

"Seems like we have another legend. My inital test proves that this lens is simply amazing! I can't see any differences in optical quality between the apertures. Pentax claims that it represents the pinnacle of Pentax design and its seems to me that they were right."

"Its quite possible the best Pentax lens ever"

"I replaced the old manual focus one with the new AF lens. Regardless of the fine qualities of the manual focus lens the new FA* 200/4 ED macro is simply astonishing. Its incredibly sharp at all apertures (includes wide open and F:32) and has a bokeh to die for."

It seems people really like it (these are comments on both the A* 200 and the FA* 200).

I looked up the FA50mm f/2.8 Macro and this comment stood out:

"I think I'll probably end up keeping just the A 50/2.8 and the A* 200/4 macro lenses. The F 50/2.8 goes to 1:1 (while the A 50/2.8 only focuses to 1:2), but I don't care much for the look or feel of the F lens (though it's construction is actually pretty decent), and the M 50/4 loses a stop of speed to the 50/2.8's without appearing to be any sharper... The A* 200/4 is a ~really~ sharp lens (probably the sharpest lens, overall, that I've ever owned, macro or otherwise), but I wouldn't ordinarily plan on trying to use it for macro work without a tripod (although it is easily handheld in reasonably bright light when merely employed as a superb telephoto lens for "normal" telephoto subjects)."

That's why people seem to think of the 200mm as the "Ultimate Macro Lens".

But it would be nice, in a way, to see a comparison, as long as no-one got too hung-up on the results.

Dan

If money's no object, isn't the 200mm Macro supposed to be about the best lens ever?

Dan

Brian,

Not sure whether it would interest you, but I've got a couple of external HDD's to which I backup. Don't know how the Windows utility does it, but I use 'Casper', which clones the drive you're backing up. So backed up files are readily accessible (I could just take the disk with me if I wanted to use the images off-site), and Casper's 'Smart-Clone' means that once a disk is copied, the next cloning just does the bits that have changed.

Quite useful when I've got nearly 100Gb of images. Means that a backup takes, usually, less than a minute. I backup everyday to one of the disks, and fortnightly to the other, which I figure gives me a chance to recover corrupted files, even if they've been copied to the first backup disk. Certainly not foolproof, but better than not backingup at all...

Dan

One of the advantages of a PC is that you don't have to buy a whole new compuetr to upgrade the processor etc.

I've just moved from an AMD Athlon XP2500+ with 1Gb of DDR400 RAM to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (much faster with a dual core) with 2Gb DDR2 667 RAM. Okay, I had to get a new motherboard and Graphics card, but it cost me just £218 altogether.

My old RAM was dying, so rather than get some to replace that, I thought I'd boost the whole system, and give myself the potential of some 'future-proofing' with the latest CPU socket type.

Just had a look at the Mac Store, a similarly spec'ed Mac Mini (Intel 1.66GHz Core Duo, same RAM, 160Gb Disk (I have 440Gb)), for which I'd have to get new monitor, modem, keyboard etc, would cost £1,226.99.

For the time being, I think I'm sticking with a PC.

Dan

P.S. Quite nice to be typing this without wondering when the next crash is coming along.

I had problems with crashes on my PC, tested the memory (with the microsoft memory tester downloaded somewhere from their website) and came up with plenty of errors.

But I couldn't be sure it wasn't a fault with the motherboard (presumably this could cause similar problems), so I went for a new M/B, Processor, Memory (DDR2 is much cheaper than DDR) and got a much faster machine for just a couple of hundred quid.

Bit of a pain, but worth it in the end.

Dan

I've had something similar myself when a PSD file got corrupted, and as the lines aren't always in the same place I would think (hope, for your sake) that it's a card problem.

Start unpacking!

Dan

I use this diffuser with a flash gun, either on camera, or using cable (it's a generic flashgun, so doesn't work wirelessly).

I find this give a good light, not too harsh, with some modeling.

Something like this...


(Was looking for an appropriate fungus, but too tired...)

Oh, hang on, I'll roll out this one again:



Dan

In one of the menus is an option along the lines of 'Allow use of lenses with aperture ring', which you need to select. This will let you set the aperture on the lens, and the body won't stop you taking the pic.

Someone here with a K100D will no doubt give you the right menu option to look for.

Dan