It's a good quality standard zoom from the MZ series days and was often coupled with the MZ-5. It's a nice sharp lens with no particular characteristics that make it stand out. I always felt it was "bland" compared to my M and A series lenses.

My feeling is that we need to be very clear why we are upgrading and only do so when there's a real reason that will be helpful to us.

We are still using the K20D, quite happily at ISO3200 if needs be, and accepting its limitations. The K-5 will be our next upgrade, now scheduled for the next tax year at the beginning of April.

The reason will be faster AF in low light, lower noise and marginally higher resolution. This will help our available light wedding shoots.

That might just be a step too far. Wouldn't do much for her ear lobes either.

Clearly the Japanese think photography should be fun. They're right!

So I did, now zapped!

The newer 55-300mm is the better lens, plus it has the advantage of QuickShift if you get the DA version. It is also more compact.

May I remind everyone that there should be no comments under the competition photos until after the judging. A few that crept in have been removed.

It's to avoid any distraction to the judge, who always distances him or herself from the discussions about the images.

I think it depends very much on the individual's eyesight. Some people, myself included, find manual focusing very easy with even a plain screen. In fact when we had cameras with split image and mircroprism aids I used to always use the plain ground glass to focus.

Other photographers sometimes have terrible problems and it might be just one of those things.

Meters very often cannot cope with the aperture extremes on any lens, but obviously an f1.2 is even more extreme. Or it may be that the software does not recognise the aperture values.

So where are the K-r cufflinks and earrings?