I like a story with a Happy Ending!

Are these items actually on offer?

They did for a while and the picture of them all gathered together looked pretty impressive in the advertising. They all went back to Nikon and/or Pentax 67 though. I heard that the Olympus kit wasn't up to the rigours and they were fed up of it failing in heavy professional use.

In those days the field leaders were Pentax and Nikon, with Canon coming up strongly behind them....

Interesting to compare old and new, but we can't extend that comparision to the Pentax 50mm f1.7 as this was a better lens in its day than the Olympus.

Not all 50mm lenses have the same design parameters.

Yes, there has, for the percentage above a certain level. For those who fall below the line life can be as desperate as you could imagine, or maybe more than you could imagine.

I have met people who literally have nothing, and that was an eye-opener to me in what we think of as a civilised society.

Nobody bothered about any of this when we used film. How many colour correction filters do you have? Did you test every new batch of film to establish a new correction for it?

My colour correction consists of using sRGB throughout, daylight or whatever colour balance I choose, and then using the Photo Filters in CS2 to produce the colour I want. The last step only when necessary...

So I use the 81A series to warm the image and the 80A series to cool the image, until I like it.

I would only take a more specific approach if I was doing a job where the actual colour values were critical - and that's a different matter altogether.

Yes, my son has an iPhone 4 and FWIW it's functionally brilliant.

Not quite sure that aesthetically I like the squaring off of the edges - the current iPhones awith their rounded contours are more pleasing to my eyes.

In a similar way I'm not so fond of the square and clunky look of the Z series cameras, preferring the more rounded MZ series.

So do functional items need to have an aesthetic appeal? Not need, but why not. It does no harm to enjoy a piece of fine engineering for what it is.

If I could get it in the house I'd have one of those 1960s big ball-shaped chairs...

If he does, I shall apologise...

Thanks Dan, a nice set of still life images!

Oh no! I've wasted an invitation! I wonder if I can rub the name out...