Have a look at my sig. I've just added an SMC A 70-210 too. I'm getting better at manual focus but need a lot more practice with fast moving subjects before i'd be anywhere near confident of getting more in-focus images than AF can muster.

I'm trying to stick to 'A' manual lenses as I find the light metering helps me set exposure much more quickly - on the 'M's I need to take a few test shots.

I haven't but I don't believe it's on the outside of the lens. Worth a try though.

Thanks for the tip John I will. I have had a play with catch in focus in the past, but only with manual lenses. I think I'd got the idea from the manual that it would assist manual focus in that I could hold the trigger down and it would only fire when it thought the subject was in focus.

My eyesight isn't great and I've never come to terms with manual focussing through the viewfinder - I struggle to get the camera to register that the subject is in focus - even if (I think!) it is. I seem to spend all my time hunting.

I've had much better results with manual focus - and I mean much better - using the contrast focus on the LCD screen - although I'm not sure how useful that would be outside in bright sunlight.

I have a K-30 and have almost exclusively been taking photos of my (now) 17 month old for the last ... er ... 17 months.

When she was 6 months old I got a DA 50 1.8 and was amazed at the sharpness and quality of the photos I got of her. Then, suddenly, at maybe 10 months, the quality of photos seriously reduced - so many were suddenly out of focus. For a while I really did blame the lens and was trying all sorts to fix it - then realised it was something much more simple than that. She could move.

So being a beginner it's taken me a while to adjust but after a lot of Googling and searching / reading these forums I'm happy once again.

Moving the focus button away from the shutter release onto the AE-L button was the first big gain. It seemed totally counter intuitive but the thread I got the tip from said something like that but that you should stick with it. And it was right. Holding AE-L down in AF-C mode gives me much more opportunity to keep her in focus - even with that lens.

Like earlier posts in the thread have said, it doesn't work for every photo - especially when the subject concerned is obsessed with the pretty camera and makes a bee line for it as soon as she hears it clicking (hence a lot of out of focus close ups of her nose) - but it's much more likely to succeed than anything else I've tried.

I try to give myself a head start with focus - if we're at home and she's run out of the room, I know she's going to be running back in again soon, so focus on something at the point where she'll come back in - the door frame, something just ahead of the door, so I know I'll get something as soon as she'll come back in.

Thanks very much for the help! I guess that's not as bad news as some of the stuff it could have been so I'll stick with it as long as the image quality lasts!

I sort of half mentioned this on another thread but thought better not hijack another thread, why not start my own, what with the spirit of silent members saying something and all that.

So I have an A 35-105 which I was lucky to be given. If I look down the lens end, with the light at a very specific angle, I can see lots of speckles near the end element. They're not on the outside.

Although they're only visible on some of the lens in the image, they do cover all of it.




However, if looking head on, the lens looks perfect and speckle free.




It has no noticeable effect on image quality but I'm still keen to know what it is. I like the lens so much that if it's terminal I may buy another one.

So if anyone can help me - what is that on my lens?!

Not as heavy as the Sigma 24-70 2.8!

I can vouch for the A35-105.

I was very lucky, I was given this lens, along with a couple of others, by the original owner.It was lucky coincidence - I'd just bought my first DSLR - my first Pentax - and he'd had his old Super A and lenses sat in a bag for 20 years so gave them to me.

It's taken me a while to get used to it. There's something about it that's not optically perfect, but I don't know enough to know what. If you look straight down the barrel of the lens, from the lens end, it looks perfect. But if you just look from an angle where you can bounce some light of it, there's a layer of tiny speckles that reflect light on one of the elements near the lens end. I don't know enough to say whether it's dust or fungus (i'd probably plump for dust) but it doesn't seem to affect picture quality in any way.

It's taken me a long time to get used to it mainly because up until recently I insisted on using the viewfinder. I've found that the MF assist on my K30 is not brilliant (the bit that beeps and goes red when it thinks it's in focus) and for a while I felt like using live view wasn't appropriate somwhow on a DSLR.

But since switching to live view when using manual lenses and using the contrast focus assist, I've had massively better results - hardly a photo out of focus. I don't know how well it would do in bright sunlight though.

Hugely impressed with the image quality from this lens - and the colours - just so accurate and representative of the subject and background.

Although I don't have a high end portrait zoon to compare it to...

Does he include postage?

It looks nice but sometimes things that look nice aren't necessarily easier to use or see.

The major irritation for me is the amount of space given over on the right hand side to advertisements. It makes, for instance, the photos in the your photos forum, very small.