Do you guys reckon £500 is a reasonable price for a 50-500 with the matched 2X converter? (private sale so no warranty)

also this is not a DG lens

thank you all for taking the time to reply, but I may have wasted your time, After careful consideration I feel that the 135-400 may not give much more magnification than my 80-320, I may go for the 170-500 or even the "bigma" if I can find one reasonbly priced.

Hi Peetle

welcome to the board

and congratulations on choosing Pentax.

I am over the moon,

WHY?

is it because of the imminent release of the K10D?

NO!

Its because I have just got the moderators at http://www.birdforum.net to include a seperate sub-forum for Pentax users.

Hi Dave

welcome to the minefield...BOOM!

I gather from your post that your just getting your feet wet with "serious" photography, Mr.Ist's advice is excelent, get in closer fill the frame with your subject, no more worrying about chopping peoples heads off, what you see in the viewfinder of your DSLR is what you get, fill it with your chosen subject and keep anything you dont want out of the frame, after that your photography can only get better.

Chris, are SRS going to focus in February? and if so will you be taking any K10Ds along?

You know the old nursery rhyme "Mondays child is fair of face, Tuesdays child is full of grace, Wednesdays child is full of WOE" etc etc

well I was born on a wednesday so thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I suppose I was a bit harsh, I'm in a better mood now I've just read John's post, I suppose I'll be changing to Canon kit in a few months, I've always liked the idea of championing the underdog!

All in all a bit of a pathetic launch, Pentax should have had much more stock available for pre-Christmas sales, I guess that most of the available stock will be snatched up by existing Pentax users, leaving very little stock left for "Christmas shoppers" Anyone looking for a new DSLR this Christmas will probably end up with a Canon or Nikon.

Well they can have mine, I am still going to wait till the new year and see if the price drops a little.

George, Brian,

I have to disagree with you both, the image does show something of the cameras capabilities, the shot was 1sec at f8, assuming it was hand held just proves that the Shake Reduction works well, could either of you guys get an image like that handholding at those settings???

Fair point Daniel, but I didnt want to confuse the OP so kept it simple, even so, using ND grads in that context is going a bit beyond there "intended"? use.

I must also confess here that I have never actually used ND filters so my knowledge is not exactly from experience but more from general knowledge of them. I have of course used coloured grads on several occasions (yes I was bitten by the Cokin bug and have several near useless filters laying around somewhere)
A bit of EXPERIENCED advice here, anyone wanting to dabble with this sort of filter would be well advised to visit a camera fair where "A" series Cokin filters can be picked up for around a £1-2 each.