The 55-300mm is the best lens for the job, unless you want a telephoto prime lens. Then we are talking vastly in excess of £100.00

You are probably better off staying as you are. The DA version with QuickShift, metal mount and lens hood would be an upgrade, but not optically.

This is more of a discussion than a Classified Ad, so I'll move it to lenses until you are sure what you are asking for.

Thanks for the update Chris.

If it helps, I can add that these are excellent lenses. Well worth £80 as at their peak, the second hand value was more like £150.

Once we have a special edition we also have another problem. It becomes a potential collectible. If we use it, we damage the value it will have as unused, boxed, as new.

If we don't use it, what good is it? It's purely an investment. And that might well be fair enough.

I sold my Rolleiflex 2,8GX Helmut Newton Special Edition, one of 500 made, because the shutter release wasn't the soft, gentle release of the 2,8F and resulted in camera shake. Useless as a camera, so I got my money back when I sold it. No profit, but I didn't wait long enough.

The 1975 Spotmatic Gold should be worth something now, but if it's been used then it might be worth a lot less than its potential. Sometimes wedding and society photographers use these sort of things as a status symbol. In some circles that will count for something and might be good marketing. A white Pentax DSLR might be noticed as well, ideal for weddings?

I can hear the expert sock designers groaning in horror...

Modern life has lost the ability to design many things. Even the humble handkerchief is no longer made properly, but it is cheap. I can vouch for this one as I inherited a whole pile of fine 1930s handkerchiefs and they are quite amazing. For one thing, they might double up nicely as fine table cloths. I exaggerate, of course.

As for lenses, we are now rediscovering that many diaphragm leaves is a good idea. Designers knew this 60 or more years ago.

One of the happy pursuits I follow is photographing birds and I hope to improve at this as time goes by. At what point I become a "birder" I do not know.

However, it looks like variable setting would be better as by removing 1.6fps we'll upset those who use it. I don't know what they use it for, but no doubt somebody does.

It's easy to dismiss things and ridicule them, but at what point does it become "inverse snobbery"?

Is a Rolls Royce car to be despised? Or to be celebrated as a triumph of Britain's ability to produce the highest quality products? It is what it is, it costs what it costs and if you can afford it and want it, that's fine. It employs lots of people making it as well. Substitue Leica camera and German in that and it's the same thing.

I don't know about Adidas socks, but I thought it was bow ties that were cool....

It's not a problem just now wadna, website came up straight away.

They did try to open communication, but didn't get much of a reception really. I understand they look at the forum, but I doubt it could ever be a full time presence.

Yes, it makes me angry too Smeggypants.

The old tapes have been a nnightmare though, when something has been available to play them back at all. Neglect.

And that's the point I'm making. A film negative, properly stored, is just there. In 50 years it will still, all things being equal, still there. If neglected and stored improperly it may well still be there.

Digital archives need constant maintenance and become redundant as technology changes.

It's not a suggestion that we should archive everything to film - there's too much digital imaging about for it ever to be seen by future generations aprt from in snippets. It's just a thought that we shouldn't become too obsessive over something we can't win.

Normal care and a backup copy, but some things will become lost.

I notice that there's not much enthusiasm for Cloud storage, which I feel will last as long as the company that's trying to make a profit out of it. Until they change their business model. Until they make a blunder and delete everything in error.

I wonder what these circumstances are? For action shots surely faster is better? What sort of action shots mean slower is better?

It would seem odd for a manufacturer to make a selling point of having a slower frame rate than the opposition and I'm not aware of one that does.