For interest, there is a test of the Voigtlander lens on Nikon body in this week's British Journal of Photography - it comes out well.

My experience too - got the Kenko MC7 2X converter today and have to use MF with my 50-135 lens.

Luckily that is the only SDM lens I have, and the TC is destined for use mainly with my recently-acquired Tamron 180mm prime plus old SMCK 135 - both of which were built many years before SDM was invented.

By the way, if SDM is not a major issue for you, I found the Kenko at Microglobe in London today, for £117. That is by far the cheapest I've seen it. They also had a 1.5X Kenko in Pentax fit but I didn't ask the price of that.

I use Neat Image, which is free as a standalone for JPEG only, but I paid for the Photoshop plug in which makes things more seamless, and works on other file types.

I think programs like Neat Image, Noise Ninja etc tend to be more sensitive and controllable than the noise removal options build into applications such as Photoshop - and when I've seen comparison tests they've always come out best.

Although it's not necessary to use them terribly much with newer dSLRs unless you're obsessed about noise (a la DePressing Review for example), it's still nice to have on occasion, and they can be great with compact cams too - sometimes required even for ISO80 from my G10 if I use RAW.

If you have one of these in mint or close to mint condition then I'd be very interested to hear from you.

Many thanks,

Jon