It's easy to think that a grey card should be cheap, after all it's only a bit of grey card...

However, an 18% grey card is a very specific thing and a proper professional tool will cost money. If you need the real thing then there's a price that you will be willing and happy to pay.

It's often thought that landscapes = wide angles, but that leads to a lot of disappointment.

Wide angles, especially ultra-wides are not easy to handle and need very careful and bold composition to succeed. For example, distant mountains can look incredibly weak and uninspiring.

On the other hand, telephotos bring things closer and make those same mountains look powerful and dramatic.

Classically, most SLR users would have aspired to a telephoto first and explored wide angles later, but it is of course a personal thing.

The typical set in the 1950s would have been a 50mm standard, 135mm telephoto and 35mm (not very) wide angle.

By the 1960s this was tending towards 28mm-50mm-135mm. I aspired by the early 1970s to 24mm-50mm-100mm.

Now, well aren't we spoilt by what is available....

Buying a 17-70mm extends the range of the lens you already have, but doesn't really enable you to take any really different images.

Why not extend your repertoire a bit more and think of the very good, very low cost and very compact SMC Pentax-DA 50-200mm? This would complement your 18-55mm very well and would not add much weight or bulk to your travvelling kit.

Yes, me too. The 24-90mm, for example, is not particularly wide, more a standard to short telephoto.

It must be that it suits their photography, which is fair enough. I wonder how many people use say a 12-24mm and then end up cropping most of their shots? In which case a 16-45mm might be more appropriate.

I suspect that the original writer may have been referring to the K100D and K10D when he mentioned early K bodies?

I hardly ever use filters on digital. All filter effects are done in Photoshop.

You obviously understand what the exceptions might be, such as effects filters and polarisers.

That's an expensive set of toys, have fun!

I like them too but I'm pretty sure that Prieni has won previously, or am I mistaken?

The competition round here is of a very high standard though.

Yes there will be variation, but Tungsten and Photoflood are also as far as I recall two different colour temperatures.

If we want character in our images, then this variation in light sources can be used to advantage and I don't necessarily try to correct it.

This is why most of the time my K10D is set to Daylight and sometimes to Cloudy. As I used to use an 81A filter with colour film this is not too surprising.

For creative use of coloured light, see "Doctor Who" every Saturday evening!

It depends on the mix of light - if there is any natura;l light in the shot then the Tungsten setting may well look blue. Use Tungsten for subjects wholly lit by tungsten bulbs. This will avoid the heavy red cast that will otherwise result.

Tungsten is outside the working range of AWB, which is why it is provided with a setting of its own.

However, if you want a reddish cast because that is more realistic, then use AWB, Daylight or whatever setting looks right.

In the days of film night shots could be shot with Daylight or Tungsten balanced film, depending on one's taste.