McBrian's kind offer of a bottle of Old Cameron took me to Google to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Diverted, I found myself reading up about Black Bowmore, which sells for around £1,000 a bottle (if you can find it).

Shock, horror, I discovered that my favourite tipple is now owned by a Japanese company, and not a nice one like Pentax, but the dreaded Suntory, makers of that bizarre brew "Japanese whisky".

I'm still reeling (being a Scot).

G

PS: McBrian, if you're out of Old Cameron, a bottle of Black Bowmore would be a perfectly accepable substitute.

Try to keep up, Mac. After all, you're now the resident old lens specialist. When I need M42 information, you're the first person I turn to.

G

http://www.aohc.it/tak01e.htm

G

I always give up after ten hours. More patient souls may last longer.

G

Do you have an SMC Pentax 1:2.5 135mm, or a Takumar (bayonet) 1:2.5 135mm.

If the former (which is a superb lens), you have a damaged sample if it is really not as good as your no-name lens. If the latter, then it has been described as: "Maybe the worst prime Pentax ever put out, in terms of resolution and contrast", so even a milk bottle would be an improvement.

Either way, I fear that there is no market for damaged no-name lenses. Spend an hour of harmless fun taking it apart, and then ten hours of frustration trying to put it back together.

G

Whatever's going. A glass in the hand is worth two in the bush!

G

AS the OP, I confess to being a little mystified as to how the above "adequately describes" me. Do you mean my attitude to commodity art, whatever that is? Do you think I liked the bull-fighting pictures because they are outrageous? (I don't think they are, incidentally.)

Juan Buhler, the photographer normally shoots very good b&w stuff in the vein of Cartier-Bresson. I only picked out these rather atypical pictures to illustrate a point about equipment. They are not representative of his usual style, which is not in the least "outrageous".

In fact I share the sentiments of the writer concerning the kind of art that seems to win the Turner Prize. However, unlike some of those artists, this photographer is a highly competent artist (in his medium - photography), both technically and conceptually.

I am not a great fan of blood sports, but nor do I think they represent man at his worst. People who hold such views are obviously going to find it hard to look at these pictures with a degree of objectivity.

But I am not going to get into a debate on blood sports (cue audible sigh of relief from JR). In my experience there is no surer way to arrange for blood to be spilt than to enter a debate with those who say they hate the spilling of blood.

G

When there's a drink in the offing, I'm very polite.

(Moderators please note.)

G

I don't know if a view can ever be out of date. However, the information it's based on can certainly be out of date, and I admit it's a while since I knew anybody who was actually attending or teaching at an art school.

But just recently we have had somebody come onto this forum and make certain very rigid and prescriptive statements about photography and art, and, lo and behold, he is currently a student at an art school.

So it seems that the foundations of my view on this topic are not built entirely on sand.

But I'm quite prepared to concede that there are good schools and bad ones, though I think that it is all too easy for such places, like all institutions, to get stuck in a rut. It's why I mentioned Beethoven; this malaise is not restricted to the visual arts.

I am also quite happy that some people think the photographs are rubbish. We are not in the Soviet Union, and there is room for more than one view. (However mistaken the other views might be! )

G

It's not too late at all.

Had the pictures been as sharp and detailed as Ofutter would have liked them, then I think the subject matter might have got in the way of appreciating them as fine compositions. But the distance, the blur, the dreamlike quality, meant that there was nothing intrinsically revolting about the images themselves, only what people project onto them.

We should remember that cattle are killed every day in abattoirs to provide us with beef and shoe leather. I think pictures of an abattoir would have been much more unsettling than these.

But let's move on. No offence taken, at least by me.

G