"Not tested, but will POSSIBLY be OK."

And probably not.

I think you are on swampy ground.

G

Buy second-hand.

My 31mm cost me £350, I think, from a forum member. But I concede you might have to pay a little more now.

G

As Mat says, it's the elders, and what appear to be their smiles, that make this shot.

Is the viewer anthropomorphising, or is parental pride a universal emotion shared by all mammals?

I incline to the latter view.

G

Yes, thanks for that, K10D.

I shall look out for it - if the Bahrainis haven't used it all for Molotov Cocktails.

G

Almost certainly the correct explanation, I should have thought.

Yet again somebody has blamed his kit for his own error. Reminds me of the time when somebody (who claimed to be a professional photographer) complained of exposure issues on his *ist D. He was very upset, too. Was going to switch brands. (I reported this here in 2005.)

He was photographing a boy jumping out of a tree in a forest clearing. The tree was lit by sunlight, the background was very dark, and the boy was wearing a white shirt and black trousers.

Guess what? He was using spot metering. So the camera was alternately trying to meter off bright tree, dark background, white shirt, and black trousers as the boy plummetted to the ground.

G

To make it, or to eat it?

G

Some of us, sadly, are old enough o have bought manual lenses when they were new, and when not only Ebay but the internet too were unimaginable.

But all the manual lenses I bought new have either been stolen, left in a taxi(!), or sold.

G

I suspect you may have a faulty example.

My 16-50 was fast and optically excellent. But there are other lenses that are nearly as good, and you have to really want weather sealing and f2.8 in order to justify the price premium.

G

I don't know about you, JPMB, but I seldom buy brand-new lenses. Of my twenty-something collection, a mere handful cost more than £260.00. My various 50s, one of the Ltds, my 400mm, my 100mm FA macro, and various others were all "new to me" when I bought them, and all cost under £200.00.

G

Incidentally, I have shot RAW almost exclusively since 2004.

G