Now you may have to sit down for this, but my main glasses have always been Carl Zeiss Umbramatic.

The technical reason is that I'm very short sighted and most photochromic lenses are "dyed in the mass" so the edges are much darker and the centre quite pale.

The Zeiss lenses are two element designs where the photochromic glass is a second layer of consistent thickness. This means they darken equally, be it at the thin centre or the thick edge of the lenses. As far as I know this is unique to the Umbramatic lenses.

I do use a Pentax microfibre cloth though!

I am now totally convinced that camera lenses are cheap. No two ways about it.

I have just had an eye test and bought two new pairs of glasses.

Computer glasses: £248.00
Distance glasses: £370.00

So I sent a text to Sue explaining how cheap camera lenses were, but the ploy was unsuccessful. All she said was "Ha Ha".....

Not a problem guys, I just want those concerned to be able to move onwards and put all this behind them. On the other hand, I don't like to lock threads unless it's absolutely necessary.

It's a great pity that what was settled and finished ends up being dragged up again and kept rolling. I know there's a dreadful temptation to have just one more word, but the summary of this is that there was a disagreement and it's now over, without any action being taken.

Letting things go and moving on heals things much quicker.

All sorted now.

I think it is 37mm. It predates the 42mm screw mount of the Pentax cameras.

Asahiflex IIA
Feb 1955 - April 1957
1/500, 1/200, 1/100, 1/50, 1/25, 1/10, 1/5, 1/2, B, T shutter.
Standard lens 50mm f3.5 Takumar pr 58mm f2.4 Takumar.
Known as Tower 22 in the USA.
20,754 produced.
$300-$450 possible value.

Hope that helps!

The red indicator only shows where the camera is focusing. It's the green hexagon that indicates focus has been found. And our own eyes of course.

Go to Gallery>Competitions and press the button labelled Enter Competition. Just upload directly from your computer into the competition.

Well done!

1) An interesting shape to the rock. I feel this doesn't quite make the best of it and maybe a tweak to the composition and to the tones in the image are needed. The top is rather light for me.

2) Pure texture. Excellent. Shots like this need to be crisp so maybe a tad more sharpening. But the image is just right.

3) This reminds me of a cave painting from prehistoric times...very nice. The area top right would be great if it maintained the texture of the rest of the background. You could do this in Photoshop by cloning or even copying another corner and blending it into the black section.

4) This reminds me of the cactus I knocked off a table and tried to catch before it hit the floor. I was pulling spines out of my hands for what seemed like hours....How about really closing in and just showing a section of the plant with no background, but lots of incredible sharp spikes?

Hope the comments help!