I went out in the snow before 8am this morning and took 159 photos. I used the DA*16-50 on my K20D as it is the only lens I have with weather sealing.

The weather sealing was really necessary. It was still snowing then and out in the woods I got dumped on a couple of times with snow falling off the trees covering the camera in snow. The big problem I had was the lens kept misting over although some of this was caused by me continually looking at it to see if it had misted over. I think I got some good pictures.

I went out again after lunch but it was not as nice. There were lots more people about and much of the snow had been trampled or churned up although I did take another 46 photos one of which I have submitted for the current 2-week competition.

My big fear was that I was going to slip over and damage the camera. I ended up with the camera bag on my front as I reckoned that if I did fall I would be going over on my back. I did slip over, onto my back, in the early morning outing but it was in deep snow on a slope while I was holding the camera and nothing came amiss other than filling the then empty camera bag with snow

Glyn

I would not want to do that. I might want to sell on the Langford book one day

I enjoyed the film and developing parts. It brought back memories from many years ago when I had to photograph printed circuit board layouts on an enormous 4:1 reduction camera. It also created a nice feeling that I no longer had to mix and use all those nasty smelling chemicals.

Glyn

The Basingstoke canal, frozen over with some snow, today.

[IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w20/GlynM/Misc/IMGP1382-small.jpg[/IMG]

K20D with DA*16-50 @ 50mm
1/20 sec, f8 and ISO 100.

Taken on 02/02/2009 at 13:34

Glyn

As a newcomer to photography I have found Langford's basic Photography very useful. I have the 2007, eight edition, which has been updated for digital photography. I come from a technical background and have been impressed with the clarity of diagrams and descriptions.

I also have one of these and I think it is great.

Initially I thought it was a little soft at infinity focus with it only coming sharp at and above f4.5. However this turned out to be a back-focusing issue on my K10D which was easily fixed. On my new K20D it is a cracking lens.

It is small, light, very well built and a joy to use. I find that I'm using it in preference to my FA50. Particularly as it has the quick-shift focus.

Bear in mind that it is a macro lens and will have been optimised for this function. As a macro it is a bit short and you can end up getting rather close to some small subjects. This can be a worry for things that bite or sting.

The focus adjustment movement is around 120 degrees but there is only about 10 degrees of movement between the last marked distance values (of 2 feet and 0.5 metres) to infinity. I guess that this makes this lens very sensitive to camera focus accuracy at this end of the focus range.

All in all I think it is a fantastic lens and as a limited lens is extremely good value for money.

Glyn

I think so. A quick look at the down-loaded manual shows that the power light is just behind the on/off switch. It is a sort of rectangle with rounded corners. You can see it in the review pictures.

I'm assuming that the power light is necessary because there is no LCD panel on the top of the camera.

The manual does not seem to say why you might want to dim the power light but I guess it is to help battery performance and possibly to stop it being annoying in the dark.

Glyn

I have a Fugifilm Finepix F40fd.

It was chosen because of the superb performance of its F10 predecessor. This range range benefits from having larger than average sensors, for compact cameras, although I think this is being negated by the marketing race over megapixels.

Glyn

[quote:3496ace15f="johnriley"]Thanks John. I'm always getting the two mixed up.

Glyn

We are not half way through the week but already it is going to give the judge a difficult task.

From my direction it has been a new and very useful experience. Normally I struggle to find, or shoot, a picture that will fit the competition subject. However for this subject I have lots of possible submissions to draw from but found that trying to pick one has made me a lot more critical of my pictures.

The worst thing that I found was that I was not concentrating on the depth of focus and many of my flower pictures have a part of the flower, usually just the furthest edges, out of focus.

I think Hyram's dog rose is a fantastic example of how to get it right and I'm sure that stopping down to f16 has contributed a lot to achieving this.

So this competition has already taught me something useful. All I need is some flowers to try it out on. Roll on the spring!

Glyn

I agree. After a few hours I got my choice down to 4 and have decided to go for volume rather than the individual flowers of my other 3

Glyn