It's very simple. A 1:1 100mm Macro lens will focus down to half the distance a 1:2 Macro 100mm will.

Macro lenses just focus closer. They achieve this with much longer focusing mechanisms, hence the size, weight and cost.

The design is different too, emphasising closer distances and flatness of field.

f/4 Macros are usually relatively simple Tessar type costructions, usually 4 elements at 50mm and 5 elements for 100mm lenses.

f/2.8 Macros are much more complex, maybe 9 elements for a 100mm.

Using the 18-55mm on a film camera isn't such as good idea as it is only designed to cover the area of the APS-C sized sensor. At wider apertures and wider angles you could expect some vignetting. The lack of an aperture ring would also be very restrictive, although Program and Shutter Priority modes could be expected to work OK.

The problem is really the batteries. Their performance dips very fast at low temperaures, so keep plenty of spares warm in a pocket just in case.

This isn't a lie, it's just an approximation. Apart from not really seeing why anyone would regard a 50mm lens as an improvement over a 55mm one....Is a 28mm lens an improvement over a 30mm one?

Basically lenses are put into categories, so a 50mm lens will be around 50mm in focal length. It might well be 52mm, or 48mm, bit it's still intended to be that category. We all know what to expect from it, and virtually all the time the precise focal length doesn't really matter. I don't want my lenses labelled as 51.67mm and suchlike - it would be totally confusing.

The interesting bit comes when we take zoom lenses. Here there might be an argument for better description if your 28-90mm zoom turns out to be 33-84mm, and it just might. You'd sell more zooms than labelling such a beast 35-80mm. In practice, Pentax zooms are quite close and the cheapest independant zooms can be way out.

There are always approximations in life, but they aren't necessarily a conspiracy, just a convenient shorthand.

I presume it's just like any magazine - advertising space is sold to whoever wants to buy it. It's up to advertisers to target where their audience might be and buy space in the right place.

What makes you think it's a pretty dismal lens? It makes it sound like the pictures will be a dirty grey unfocused mess!

All the Pentax lenses can produce sharp images, in the case of the cheaper kit zooms some are better than others but hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised.

If you do decide to use the lens as a door stop let me know - I need a cheap one of these for testing purposes.

When we used film cameras this sort of testing would be done by no-one as the delay in processing meant it never crossed our minds.

These days the immediacy of digital means that we are free to become paranoid about something that has probably always been a problem but we never knew.

I am happy if my shots look sharp. If they look sharp then they are sharp.

I would say watch the backgrounds, stop the lens down further for more DOF and use a solid tripod on a solid floor.

The more of these you shoot the better they will be and the easier it will become.

We went there once. We wanted a lid for a teapot and drove down to find the factory.

Sadly, the week we chose to go was....yes, the Potters' Holidays.

Seriously though we did have lots of family around Biddulph, Knypersley and Stoke-on-Trent, but sadly they have all slowly died off.

Not as far as Stafford though. Is there still a quite decent camera shop in Stafford?

Of course! I wondered who would be the first to ask....