(1919?) Reo Touring - you sure have a lot of nice cars 'round your neck of the woods.

Great pictures once again - especially the Model A Coupe

Listings on eBay take about an hour or two to show up in searches as a rule - that's quite normal. I've got annoyed before though when I've entered a listing that contains a keyword (in my case "gun" as it has to be checked by a member of eBay staff before it shows up. Unfortunately for me I made the listing on a Friday evening and it didn't appear in searches until the following Monday - I've been a lot more careful since then!

Never mind the Hasselblads, I can't even afford a Pentax MF!

I do have an old Rolleicord though (Schneider lens), and I agree that slides - and even prints - on 120 film give exceptional results compared to 35mm or digital capture. It's just a shame that viewing them on the web really doesn't do them justice (although travel67's gallery does have some very fine pictures in it!).

You could get a Pentax DSLR and use your 645 lenses with an adaptor...

Can I put in a word on behalf of my own digital P&S, even though it's not a Pentax?

I would heartily recommend the Contax TVS Digital, new copies of which are still available on ebay for around £170 including p&p from a number of far east sellers. You might even find the odd used one but most who bought one when they were in production (like me!) are keeping a firm grip on them. Let me explain why...

I'll start off with the bad points; firstly, it was launched in 2002 with a list price of £700 and offered a fraction of its competitors' features for triple their price - not a sales pitch that endeared it to the public at large and was probably the last nail in Contax's coffin. The lens was a modest 3x zoom (35-105mm equivalent), the buffer rate was non-existant, the macro mode was nothing to write home about and it featured what was probably the very worst LCD screen ever to find its way onto a digital camera. Add to all that a counter-intuitive menu system and a lack of any "scene" modes and you could easily have named it the Contax TVS Doomed.

But then there are the good points...

Firstly, the build of the thing: it really is as solid as a tank with its all-titanium body and sapphire glass shutter release. It feels like the sort of object you'll be passing on to your grandchildren. It's almost perfectly weighted, easy to grip and just slips into any pocket - even when it's wearing its (supplied) leather case which also holds the tiny (supplied) infra-red remote. I can never get bored of just switching mine on and off so I can watch the lens retract fully into the body and the little titanium curtains closing over it - no chance of ever losing a lens cap!

Then there's the operation: I mentioned the clunky menu but the good news is I never feel the need to delve into it. The controls you need (mode dial, zoom control, flash mode, shutter) are all mounted onto the body and are well weighted with positive feel. The rubbish LCD is generally blank as the camera features an excellent, clear optical viewfinder - this also means the supplied Li-Ion battery seems to last literally months between charges. Things such as white balance, manual focus, etc can be accessed and overridden if need be but I've never found the camera to found lacking when it comes to its own choices.

The resolution was a ground-breaking (in 2002) 5 megapixels, small fish by today's standards but actually perfect for printing up to A4 size and far less noisy than many of today's 8 and 10 MP compacts.

The main selling point though is the wonderful pictures this camera is capable of taking. The Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T* lens is simply sublime! Colours are rich and full of detail - I've taken a lot of pictures with many digital compacts (Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Minolta, Fuji, Kodak) and the ones from the Contax are simply the best, bar none.

In summary, it's a quality over quantity thing. If you want whistles and bells with speedy operation look elsewhere. If you want truly top-notch pictures and a piece of engineering excellence that will probably outlive you, then the Contax TVS Digital is the camera to buy.

Oh, and it takes SD cards...

I use a Philips 190CW which is a "bit-better-than-budget-but-not-exactly-high-end" 19" widescreen. I love it to be honest! All my TV's over the years have been from Philips and I like the look (just like I like the look of Pentax glass). There are undoubtably better models on the market but for £125 (February 07) I really couldn't be happier.

I wasn't going to get a widescreen initially but the 4:3 I originally wanted wasn't in stock anywhere. Now I've used the widescreen I don't think I'd ever go back - nice to have space at the side of the screen for floating toolbars, etc.

Just my $0.02

Where old car washes come to die...




K10D / DA12-24 @ 12mm / f4 / 1-750sec

I've got a Tamron AF 70-300mm f4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 (bit of a mouthful!) which is quite a reasonable lens - it's not a stellar performer by any stretch of the imagination but with a street price normally around the £100 - £120 mark you get a lot of lens for your money. For a similar price you could get the Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO Macro DG which a few on these boards seem to rate - I've not used one myself though.

Neither are especially fast, but if you want a long telephoto with a large aperture you need to pay accordingly (think thousands rather than hundreds). Either of these lenses should be a good start though.

I find the K10D's performance at ISO1600 to be quite impressive! As your pics show the noise doesn't really detract from the overall quality of the images and I'd imagine it's a complete non-issue for newspaper work. If I was on the Romford Recorder I'd probably go for the 4th one as a good illustrative shot.