I chatted to Rocky yesterday at Photographica too, I've chatted to him many times at camera fairs and auctions and he's a nice guy - just not particularly well organised sometimes.

Most of the negative comments I've read about him could have been sorted by communication so I take them with a pinch of salt.

UV light will kill the fungus but as the fungus is too small to be seen by the human eye you won't notice it's gone.

The "spider's web" that you can see is the excretion that the fungus leaves behind as it wanders around the inside of your lens - no amount of UV light will remove this and you can't "kill" it as it's never been a living thing.

The only solution is to clean it off, which once you get the lens open is generally quite straightforward. No need for expensive chemicals either, a soft wipe with a little water/vinegar solution should do the trick

I shoot a lot of C41 120 film and very little 35mm, so Genie have been a godsend to me. I tend to send several rolls at a time though as the postage cost per roll works out a lot cheaper than sending them individually. They always come back via 1st class recorded delivery and the negatives are sleeved and slipped between thick card protectors. Can't argue with the price or the service to be honest...

I use Genie Imaging - it's £1.99 a roll (+VAT and postage) for C41 and E6, 35mm or 120 rolls.

Quality is very good and turn around usually very quick (I send my films off on a Monday morning and they're invariably back on Wednesday morning).

The switch to move between manual and auto focus is built into the camera body, not the lens.

The particular lens you mention has a "Quick-Shift" function that allows you to leave the camera in autofocus and then grab the lens to manually focus (override) at any time.

The lens will be just fine for your course.

With most things I'd say buy the best you can afford, however, with ND grads I'll take a slightly different route.

My anecdotal evidence points to the fact that most folk who buy a set of grads end up using them once or twice before relegating them to the back of the cupboard as they're unwieldy and tricky to use effectively without a bit of practice.

For that reason I'd say start off with a cheap set, see how you get on with them (magenta casts can be removed in PP anyway so they're not the end of the world) and if you like them save up for a set of Lees. If not (which statistically is more likely) then you won't have lost too much money and you can always sell them on to somebody else to have a play with.

The reason most compacts have relatively slow response times is that they don't calculate exposure and/or focus until the moment you actually press the shutter button - those calculations then taking place before the picture is recorded. It varies from camera to camera but in my experience a compact with manual overrides (and used as such) is just as quick as a DSLR.

Of course the downside is that fully manual compacts are (a) thin on the ground and (b) generally as expensive as an entry level DSLR, at which point they become difficult to justify unless you have specific needs.

Compact System Camera

I'm glad you bought them. Sod's Law I just forked out for a set of 52mm yellow / orange / green filters last week to use on the 50/1.2, but they were Hoya and when I saw B+W ones being advertised...

Oh well, can't win 'em all.

Glad you liked it - I knew whoever bought it would be pleased.