I saw this advertised second hand so I bought it and it's now on the way. A Tokina 80-400mm Pentax KAF fit seems a pretty rare sort of lens, probably an older version from days when Tokina sold Pentax mount varieties of their lenses.

It has the potential to be very useful, so I snapped it up, but I know nothing about this lens.

Any info from anyone?

Pentax made lots of lenses longer than 300mm. 400, 400-600 zoom, 500, 600, 1000, 1200, 2000mm in all sorts of varieties.

In reality, they were (and still are when they crop up second hand) just the same sort of price as Nikon and Canon lenses of similar spec. Nikon and Canon users probablt don't spend thousands on their lenses either, but buy Sigma and others. Still expensive but more affordable.

Likewise, you can get these lenses in Pentax fit. I think the idea that we can't get long lenses for our Pentax DSLRs is a bit of an illusion really.

Mostly Harmless.

It is true that although transistor amplifiers will give better lab results in tests, when tested by human ears valves are better.

Unfortunately, valves gets very hot, attract dust, deteriorate gradually in use and are now very expensive.

I'd like to be a valve fan, but it's too late for that now.

Judging from past offerings, a very long lens may well be very expensive as well. There have been some fantastic Pentax telephoto lenses but well outside my price range.

Is the 600mm f4 still available to special order? £7000 or so?

For those who can afford them there are offerings on eBay from maybe £1000 to £1500 that would fit the bill, although maybe not the pocket.

Zoom lenses may not have an accurate point of focus anyway. Most modern zooms are parfocals, where after zooming the focus point will change.

So the old advice of focusing at the long end and then zooming out is not very good.

Zooms are such a compromise that it would be difficult to now where to start really - I leave well alone and they work well enough.

That would be my choice as well. Simple and effective kit and the minimum of messing about changing lenses.

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/how-to-post-images-6624

Thos thread explains how to put a link into any of the forums to insert an image in a message.

The same things apply to competitions in the forums.

There is no rule about what you post where - it's up to you whether you want to put general images in the Gallery or in the Your Photos section of the forum. It is not a good idea to do both though as this just splits the attention given to your picture.

Going back to the Dawn of Time, many box cameras were made in alternative colours. We only became stuffy about colours much later!

If you have a problem getting the people concerned to take the photos off, then you could contact Picasa and inform them that your images have been appropriated without your permission.

The site may remove them.