I agree it's soft rather than crisp, but I actually don't mind that in this case. It's possible it's soft because of the fine rain and generally misty nature of the day, but whatever the reason I still find her quite striking.

A crop? Maybe so. I decided to keep in some of the other face to show contexxt and that she was surrounded by people. A tighter crop is a totally valid alternative that many might well prefer.

Please remember we are a site that caters for all age groups. We need to bear that in mind when posting.

Ah, in that case Asahi Photo or Harrow Technical I would think.

There used to be a place in Oldham, if that's closer for you, but I've lost track of the name and address.

Yes, with suitable care to avoid it getting too wet.

Lenses are for using!

I think I'd explain to the insurance company that these are specialist repairs and one repairer (the official one) already has the lens in bits for their quote.

It would have to be reassembled, reclaimed, sent on elsewhwere and so on.

Surely this isn't a reasonable or cost effective thing to do?

The distracting thing is another person, it was a really tight crowd.

This was the 55-300mm in the rain....

I thought the face and the outfit were wonderful. A real sense of style:
[IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/johnriley1uk/034-Face-in-the-Crowd.jpg[/IMG]

I have never had mould in a lens in the past several decades, and have never exposed any lenses to the sun. Expanding and contracting the elements and their support with heat from the sun doesn't seem like a good plan to me.

If you could get the UV light without the heat maybe, but you can't. Even UV lights designed to cure polymers give off huge amounts of heat. Possibly a couple of 3 second bursts with a Plasma Light would be OK.

It's better to use the silver oxide batteries with the MX, the alkaline ones won't last as long but are OK, but definitely not Lithium. Silver oxide cells should last a year or even two years with no problem.

The meter switches on with a half press of the shutter release and will switch off as soon as you take off that pressure, unless the wind lever is pulled out slightly. In the latter case it will stay on till you push the lever back.

If an MX or Super A drains batteries this is because there is a fault that needs repairing....

AP said something very nice about Pentax in the new issue, due out tomorrow.

In the test of two Sony DSLRs they said that the resolution "was not in the same league as the Pentax K-7" and that was despite a very similar pixel count.

If, like me, you like high detail resolution, then you might be better off with the Pentax route.