Glad it's all OK and sorted and we've all learned something new.

The pictures look good, it will be nice to see some more in due course.

Black dust on negative = white spot on print. It can be dust that adheres to the film during drying and the drying needs to be in a scrupulously clean area. A shaft of sunlight in a room reveals just how much dust is around. Negatives should be cleaned carefully prior to avery use, including scanning.

There are microfibre cloths, up to very expensive antistatic vaccum devices.

Thank you for that Haworth. I hope that she will find that in general we are much friendlier here than the initial greetings she received might suggest.

If you think the statement is faulty, rather than accusing people of not telling the truth why not point out the discrepancy so that it can be looked into? Hurling insults does not reflect well on anyone.

Let's stop the responses in this thread being so OTT please, it's not the way to communicate in a civil manner.

I missed the 7m reference, and that does seem a bit excessive, but when i check out Sue's lens I'm surprised to find that hers is the same. It depends how far away the infinity subject is of course but at quite long distances and 18mm the focus point does approach the 7m mark.

Her lens is very sharp so I assume it's a characteristic of the lens. Well spotted.

You can't use the technique of focusing at the longest focal length and then zooming out with many zoom lenses. They are not really true zooms, but varifocal lenses. The focus point will shift as you change focal length. We call them all zooms for simplicity, although the real meaning is probably getting a bit lost.

Zoom first, then focus and you should be fine. Any problems with your lens will soon become apparent.

It's a great lens, really versatile and should be great fun to use.

It's a lot easier to deal with sensor cleaning than to spot prints. White spots on darkroom prints were a nightmare.

Your link is fine ChrisR and I'll second the Small Battery Company as a good place to buy unusual batteries.

I suppose Amazon is always worth a try as well.

I think that has been, over a few posts there, quite a demonstration of negativity and quite a rude way to say hello to anyone.

Ranting at people the moment they walk through the door doesn't seem encouraging to me, or conducive to a proper exchange of ideas.

It must be very difficult to decide over the "noise" what people actually do want that's going to move things forward in a practical and profitable manner.

eBay for the strap, or perhaps a camera fair.

The Spotmatic, Spotmatic II or Spotmatic F should do fine. An overhaul would always be a good idea. Wein cells offer an alternative to the defunct Mercury batteries. The F uses a PX625 cell rather than the PX400 of the other Spotmatics.

The ES is rather unreliable electronically, although I expect some have survived. The ESII is better, but it's still early days for these sort of systems.