True, but the OP lives in Scotland, which takes no prisoners when it comes to beauty contests. That's the beauty of Nature that I am talking about.

G

PS: AS do you, of course!

Actually, I do like the idea of a walkabout lens for holidays. But I would be happy to sacrifice speed and range for petiteness.

I'd be quite happy with a 17-70 1:5.6.

And I would not want the purchase of such a lens to oust any other lens from my bag, for those more frequent occasions when I am NOT on holiday.

G

link

This rather confounds those who claimed that 50% or more bodies had the problem, and said that Pentax were trying to sweep it under the carpet.

Hats off to Pentax for sorting matters out swiftly, and for publicly acknowledging and apologising for the incident.

G

Nobody said that there is NO demand for long lenses. There obviously is SOME demand, but in Pentax's view, not enough. The problem is that if Pentax were to produce, say, a 500mm lens, then it would need to be priced at, say, £5,000 if only 1,000 people bought it, £2000 if only 10,000 people bought it, etc.

They have presumably calculated that at any particular price point they would not sell enough to make the exercise worthwhile.

Whether it's worth making one as a loss-leader is another matter. If they were to, then in my view they should go the whole hog and produce a 500mm 1:5.6 and price it at £800.00. They'd need to sell a lot to recoup their investment, but I think they'd probably sell quite a few.

G

Of course, if you live in Edinburgh, you could do worse than visit the UK's second best city - London. If you live in London it is easy to become blase about it, but it really is one of the world's best cities by almost every measure.

Photographically, the possibilities are limitless. There are architectural gems in almost every (pre-1920s) street.

G

Actually, Prague and Budapest are quite dissimilar. The latter is much bigger and grander, with elegant boulevards and some amazingly quirky and magnificent art nouveau buildings.

Prague is more homogenous and more intimate; nicer to wander around on foot, but with fewer sights to make you gasp. I love both, but I wouldn't bracket them together.

The food is immeasurably better in Budapest - if you like foie gras, it's ubiquitous, and that is not the only delight. Furthermore, there is plenty of excellent wine. The Czechs make wine, too, but one's first bottle of Czech wine is often also one's last.

In Northern Czech, Karlovy Vary is a superb (and very photogenic) spa town, much favoured by oligarchs and their ladies.

The centre of Bratislava is pretty, but small. Not worthy of a detour, but a place to stop if you happen to be canoeing down the Danube.

Don't go to Bucharest (but if you have to, avoid Baneasa airport at ALL COSTS). The Romanian countryside is reckoned to be lovely - sadly I haven't been outside the metropolis. Once called the Paris of the East, Bucharest is now an awful mess.

Poland has one or two gems. Krakow is well worth a visit (undamaged by WW2) , as is the extraordinary Zamosc, a "new town" built around 1580 by an Italian architect for Count Zamoyski - whose descendent I once sat next to at a concert in London. Being Italian, the architect built an Italian city. The effect is a bit like stumbling unexpectedly across Portmeirion - except that Zamosc is real.

Many Polish cities had to be rebuilt almost from scratch after the war. Warsaw was perhaps the least successful example, but they did a beautiful job in Gdansk, which is also interesting for Westerplatte (the start of WW2), the huge shipyards, Solidarity and the fall of the USSR, and the Hanseatic League. Again, lots to photograph.

Although the Poles suffered terribly in WW2, they fared much better during the Napoleonic Wars, thanks to Madame Walewska, Boney's favourite mistress (immortalised in Sole Walewska). She protected Poland from invasion by Napoleon, which made her, to the Poles at least, one of history's most useful courtesans.

But all this is totally irrelevant because BMI goes nowhere near any of these places. Perhaps you can do a miles swap with somebody who has some Easyjet or Wizzair miles. Assuming there are such things.

G

You have omitted to add the apology.

I don't suppose I'll get one from you, though.

G

I have seen no credible evidence of that.

G

If you think about it, SLRs would never have been invented if electronic viewfinders had been available.

G

I am having a bad evening tonight. I am both dyscalculiastic and dyslexic. Not to mention dyspeptic.

Gc