2 and 3 for me, especially 3. I like the contrast between the nearby bottom part of 2 and the increasing haziness with distance. Perhaps you could use a bit more of the bottom part to help it along?

The standard chargers sold for the K5, K3 and K1 are just fine, as are the 3rd party batteries (they all have different capacities, but so what?). I have 6 batteries on the go for three cameras and I rotate them. Put em on charge at breakfast, they're done by lunchtime. Now and again it is well to clean both the tips of the charger terminals and the battery terminals due to build-up of micro muck. I use a pencil eraser on them.
As to brands, Maximafoto and Energiser have been going well for several years now.

Thank you for your interest and for your kind comments. I realised it would have been helpful to photograph the contraption I have made
to serve as a sunshade/ hood. I'm not certain that it wouldn't vignette at its full format size because I don't know the angle of view but it
doesn't matter on a DSLR. The card is the stuff they use to keep 4-packs of beer cans together. It's remarkably tough stuff.

The sun was out a few days back and so was Mrs. Wozhere so I grabbed her bowl of spring irises and took them outside. I also took my Pentax mounted
105mm Trioplan that I had rescued from a scrap folding camera and put that on the K1. I think the original medium format was 5cm x 4cm - somewhat
bigger than the 3.5cm of a 'full frame' DSLR so the images are utilising the higher quality from the central area of the lens with the edges being discarded.

1. This one was in the 'main gallery' a few days ago. It is completely representative of what this wonderful lens can produce. It is sharp as a razor (wide open
at f4.5), with beautifully saturated colours and, of course, the famous Trioplan bubble bokeh.



2. The nice thing about potted plants is that you can angle them around however you might like. The first one was with the subject shaded. This one was
taken with the sun almost fully behind the flowers. I have made a custom sun hood to fit this lens (about 34mm external diameter) by forming a cone
out of stiff card and cutting around the narrow end, making it successively wider, until it just fits. The result was painted satin black and the whole ensemble
looks just like an old-fashioned motor car horn mounted on the end of a camera!



3. This one is concentrating as much on the bokeh as on the flowers.



4. And this is quite a stiff crop from it. The image quality has hardly wavered at all.



I am really enjoying learning to use this 1936 beauty and I'm sure you will see more from it.
How do I know the date? It had a little lead seal fixed to it from the Dutch customs together with its own handwritten 'visa' on a folded card !

Certainly at 600 it's a sod to focus but when you do nail it it's brilliant. It does produce donuts but as you can see above they don't intrude.
What a shame all the birdies fled. I'd like to see some more of these.

Tell HS2 about it. They have utterly razed acres and acres of Warwickshire, often for access roads and materials dumps, neither of which required trees to have been bulldozed.

As to the shot that wasn't very well focused, it was mentioned that the focus was set to infinity. That's probably the reason for the poor focus because with some lenses you go past infinity by winding it all the way to the stop. It's always better to look at what you've got in live view when it will be found that 'focus' is just this side of the infinity stop.

Oh my. Thank you for all those nice comments, especially for results from such a grey, uninspiring day.
In comparison with the other two, I agree about the first one not being in the same class but it was taken because of the almost identical shapes of the wiggles in their trunks, particularly in the upper parts. Now that I examine the other two, I see that there is a similar kink towards the tops of a lot of these trunks. Am I seeing things or is there maybe something more going on here?

Benz3ne wrote: We're in the UK. What sun?

Ah - I note you live in that bit of the UK permanently blessed with downpours of rain? .... True story - I told a German visitor how it always rains in Wales because he was looking forward to our visit there. He clearly didn't believe me. We drove along, past the "Welcome to Wales" sign (at least, that's what I thought it said) and the skies darkened and it absolutely threw it down.

Back on thread - the 1.4/ 50mm Tak is a very nice lens. For the record, Red IR mark to the left of f4 = 7 element and to the right = 8 element.

It was overcast, cold and threatening rain when I went for my walk today so I decided to make use of the conditions and
the tall birch trees that have grown straight up in an abandoned coppice. They were taken with an SMC Pentax-A 24 -50 zoom
at 24mm and f11 on a K1. Believe it or not, they are in colour (!) but conditions would have you think otherwise.

Heaven knows what caused these two to grow with identical bends and twists?



These views looking straight up have a really 'organic' feel to them



In most groups of trees the topmost branches just tangle together. It is only in one or two cases that they have made
a sort of 'hole' for themselves at the top of the canopy. When they do, the results are quite dramatic.



Comments are welcome, as always.