I've had several of the 40mm lenses over the years, and all have been fine. Some tests when they first came out put them ajead of the 50mm f1.7 in quality terms, some on a par, but none slated them.

Like everyone else, I can only report what I find, and I've always been very pleased with these lenses.

One thing is certain though, the design may be quite critical in terms of centreing, so it's entirely possible that there are less good ones about.

Don't OHNAR slide duplicators result in a cropped image with APS-C sensor cameras?

If you were disappointed with a SMC Pentax-M 40mm f2.8 then it wasn't up to scratch. These are actually very fine lenses.

Keeping film straight is a problem. Slides in a slide mount are always "bowed" so one part will be in focus whilst another is not. When being projected they would often "pop" into a different plane of focus as they warmed up, needing constant refocusing.

Film is also often not straight in the camera. Many designs mean the film is "kinked" where it goes over the guide rails, so the first shot after it has been in ther camera for a while will be less sharp as the "kink" arrives at the film gate. In fact, it took many years before 35mm film cassettes were redesigned to allow the film to exit tangentially - previously film would be kinked by the off axis exit from the cassette. Rollei TLR cameras have an optional glass plate back, where the film is pressed flat against a glass surface.

Film photography is not without its problems. Dust and scratches you are already aware of!

As for film scanners, there are cheap ones suck as the Plustech (is that right?) and the good ones from Minolta and Nikon. Searching the photographic websites will give you the available choices - try Calumet, Jessops, Jacons, Wildings, SRS, Park Cameras and others in the UK.

You will be better off using the SMC version, but as we can see the Takumar(Bayonet) version is not al all bad.

Slides can be scanned to make digital files - as simple as that....

However, the process is very, very time consuming. Or very expensive if you get someone else to do it.

So you either buy a slide/negative scanner and spend many hours doing the job, or spend some monet getting someone to do it for you.

Of course before any of that you need to trawl through the slides to find the ones you want to copy....

Sorry gang, something has come up to keep us in Manchester on Saturday. Sunday is already booked elsewhere, so it looks like we'll have to wait until next time.

Have fun though and don't forget to post pictures of the evidence, I mean the activities!

Photographers have always suffered from leaning shots and the simple answer is if you always lean one way, compensate when you take the shot by leaning slightly the other way.

Well we are on at least one of our computers, so I guess the answer must be yes!

Take out the batteries, leave for a few minutes and then re-install fresh batteries. Then try again.

If this doesn't work, then it looks as if a fault has developed.