That's very generous of you Karl, hopefully somebody does know such a budding photographer. A K10D would be very serviceable and give good results.

An infra red filter just passes IR light, but the cut off point is different depending on the filter. The R72 cuts off from 720nm so might pass a small amount of near-IR red. The R95 will look even blacker, only passing IR light beyond 950nm.

I have never, ever seen anything on the mirror of any SLR camera. The only peel-off plastic would be on the baseplate.

You've already posted this, so please only post things once. People will see it. If there are multiple postings then the replies will get confused over different sections and it won't help.

If you want to sell, then the Classified section of the forum is the place. You'll need to quote a price and also give people an idea of where you are, just in case they want to meet and inspect. Just the general area will do, don't post your full address.

I'm in the process of doing two lenses now. The first has taken up most of the morning for a prime lens. The zoom will be done by lunch tomorrow. So a day and a half for those two, perhaps with other things in beteen.

There's some great ideas being mulled over in this thread, although like everything else it all takes time and somebody has to do lots of work to make things happen.

One thing that I do think is that the lens in question is definitely worth buying and if the buyer didn't like the copy they received then they just send it back. Nothing could be easier these days as we have so much consumer protection. I would never advocate just returning a thing for no good reason though, it has to fair for buyer and seller alike.

I'd also say that for me, as a personal thing, I would prefer to buy the f/4 version. It is smaller, lighter, costs less, and the difference of one stop isn't a deal breaker. So, whatever is said in reviews be it on YouTube or elsewhere it still all depends on the requirements of the individual photographer.

I use the Q system quite a lot. It's great for any situation where carrying a DSLR is inapprpriate and the quality is excellent.

It's also very good for experimenting with as all sorts of adapters are available. i've used it with CCTV lenses, AF extension tubes, Pentax 110 system film lenses and lots of other things.

At that price, what are you waiting for?

One thought is AWB though. For a sunset I would use Daylight setting and then all the warm colours would remain warm. otherwise, the camera will try to correct them in AWB and produce an overall average grey, making the sun the wrong colour as perceived.

I'm assuming that what your eues saw is not being reproduced by the software. This is true of film as well in that different films would show colour differently. I think the answer is that you need to be able to adjust the images so that they appear as you wish them to appear. Different software is clearly producing different results, although no doubt all of them could be adjusted appropriately.

Steve clearly has a plan.....