If it looks like a Dutch master then I'm very pleased. Dutch masters are amongst my favourite painters.

It's not a matter of sharpness - all the 50mm lenses are sharp and pretty much identical at f8 and similar apertures.

The difference is in how much you can "abuse" the lens with teleconverters, bellows, close up lenses, etc. The f1.7 will give better results because it has a flatter field than the f1.4. It's down to different design parameters.

I have the lens in question, it's superb and thoroughly recommended.

But do consider why you would buy from eBay for £140 when for maybe £15 more you could buy from Chris at SRS.

Polarisers are not ideal with ultra-wide lenses because of the uneven polarisation in the sky.

We spent the day at Southport Flowewr Show. It was an excellent day of photography and here is a sample image:
[IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/johnriley1uk/035-Still-Life-1.jpg[/IMG]

Sorry to hear how things have been Liam, but we're glad to see you back.

The short answer to your question is of course not, you and everybody else can enter. The whole point of these competitions is to be accessible.

I post pictures like that on EPZ every day - how will you tell the difference I wonder? This must mean that every day is a holiday. Yay!

Usually when I go on holiday the Internet gets left behind, after Sue has dragged my fingernails from their grip on the PC anyway.

This time I'd signed up to Internet Anywhere with Orange and the laptop has been live wherever we have been.

Fantastic, it works. Using the mobile phone network, anywhere there was an Orange signal we were online. The speed can be quite slow where the local system is GPRS, just like going back to dial-up, but elsewhere where there is a G3 or better network it flies quite fast enough.

Anyway, I'm back now, so things are slighlty faster again, which is nice. But it'll be great to be able to keep in touch from almost anywhere!

If you do that you will have given them a bit more information than usual. I'm not sure how significant that would be but I personally would not do it.

Can you place a web order instead?

It isn't there, George, and even if it had been deleted I would still see it.

I suspect that you might have done what I have occasionally done, to my great annoyance, and that is prepare the post but neglect to press "Submit" - this usually happens when distracted...