They marketed a range of budget lenses in the 1970s, but whether or not they made them is something else.

Fortunately for me this will be Japan-only for a while at least, but as and when SRS start to offer them then I will have talked myself into being in the queue by then.

Saving up unfortunately as the pillow is a bit flat at the moment.

The overall look of an image, its characteristics, its overall rendering.

This is an exciting new option that will be fast to use and very manageable in the field. Looks good to me!

I've explained this effect above. Light is more polarised at 90 degrees to the sun, and progressively less so as you look nearer to the sun. This causes different amounts of darkening across the sky. The wider the angle of the lens, the more this effect becomes visible.

If you use a polarizer on a wide angle lens, the saturation of the sky will vary across the frame because the polarization is at maximum 90 degrees to the sun and falls off as we move away. The more breadth of sky in the image, the more we will notice the variation across the frame.

Personally, as ultra wide lenses tend to vignette slightly anyway, I don't use a PL on them at all. On 35mm film, a 28mm lens is the widest I would use a PL on. A 24mm lens shows the variation quite clearly.

The 12-24mm DA lens, for example, will show nicely darkened corners in ultra-wide landscapes. This is exactly what we used to print in when making black and white darkroom prints. Darkened corners concentrate the eyes towards the centre of the image.

When you get to Snowdonia, perhaps make a point of visiting Portmeirion, the place where "The Prisoner" and countless other TV and film productions were filmed.

definitely a full day of photo possibilities, with new visual treats at every turn.

I can't really agree with this. Why on earth would we want Pentax split up into two disconnected companies? And why Hoya to make lenses - they don't make lenses. Just as Kodak don't make camera bodies.

Surely we just want Pentax to do more of what they are already very successfully doing?

We were there today, having a general browse and a more specific look at a few things.

I got to handle a Pentax i10, even in white which is what I fancy buying. It says "Designed by Pentax" on the back. I liked the 16:9 screen and the imitation leather panelling. It was flatter than I expected, but that's a good thing as it is still pocketable. There was lots of Pentax stuff on sale at Jacobs and Camera World.

Light and Land produce some excellent books, full of inspiring images. Liked those a lot. Worth a look on Amazon I think!

The thrust of the exhibition seemed to be the ancillary items such as backgrounds, lighting, courses, books, albums and so on. The actual cameras had a relatively small amount of space, maybe because we all have cameras already and there are plenty of places where they can vie for attention. This was quite a practical exhibition.

I still have the feeling though that there are less people there, showing less than in previous years. Times are hard?

Test pictures of brick walls are fine if we spend our time taking pictures of brick walls, but they really only show something about edge to edge sharpness and distortion levels.

There's a lot more to lenses than just one parameter and I usually find I have to live with a lens for a while before I really decide if i like it or not. The testing for me is done on the real subjects that I shoot.

I can tell you that my most used lens is the 16-45mm.