Thanks to Mike for a splendid appraisal. And quick as well, do you never sleep?

Congrats spirit_of_will and over to you.....

Stranger in a Strange Land

Please refer to the tidied up competition rules before posting.

Unfortunately I'm not that close to the area, but I can say welcome to the forum!

We have a FA 100mm and it is an exceptional lens.

It will depend on the sort of macro work you want to do.

If I were copying documents I might want a 50mm. But for most other applications a 100mm would be better. I'm not sure about the 200mm having never used one but I would expect it would be excellent for small animals/birds/flowers/bugs.

Each competition is started in a new thread and entries are posted in the thread. The competitions end at Midnight (UK time) on Sunday. The winner sets the new competition in a new thread as soon as possible and then judges the results after the closing time.

Please only give a title and at the most brief details. No discussion about the images - a separate thread usually starts in the General Digital Photography section for any discussion.

When you have posted your image please leave it there and don't change it. It would be a little unfair to keep changing an image in the light of other entries.

Images should be an adequate size to display properly, about 1000 pixels on the longest side seems to work well.

Images should be all your own work.

No prizes, but think of the Kudos and above all have fun.

Revision 25 07 2008: Now that we have a Competition in the Gallery section, future weekly competitions are held there. Go to Gallery>Competitions and follow the instructions. All rules, such as they are, continue, but the size limitation is no longer necessary. Have fun!

The discussion thread on the competitions is now started in the "Competitions" forum. Please don't post comments in the actual competitions area until the judge has judged. After that, comment away! Likewise, after entries start to come in the judge should answer no more questions in the discussion thread. It would be unfair for further clarification to be made after anyone had already committed to their entry.

Revision 15 06 2010: Obsolete wording deleted to avoid confusion now that the competition is held in the Gallery>Competitions section.

Yes, thanks for that, a very thoughtful review.

I thought at first that using the 12-24mm and 24-90mm together would be a good prospect, but it wasn't. The 16-45mm was much more useful on its own and covered 95% of what I needed, simply because the two lens option involved too much lens changing and most of my shots were in the middle area.

I use:

10-17mm
12-24mm
16-45mm
50-200mm
100mm Macro

and that covers just about everything. Apart from playing with lots of other lenses from various eras of course...

I think what you are saying is a reasonable supposition, or educated guess, but just think how long these lenses take to get to market...and it isn't even on the Lens Roadmap.

The 12-24mm is an exceptional lens and it's here right now.