As it says in the title, I'm selling my 35mm SMCM. I'm struggling to think of a reason why it wouldn't be described as "as new" - it's certainly "mint".

Lovely lens built as nicely as all the SMCM's, and a very cost effective alternative to the 35/2 FA lens that nobody wants to part with! Nice focal length on a cropped sensor, and has less distortion than its more comment 28/2.8 cousin.

It's nice and sharp - pretty good wide open and excellent as soon as you stop down - and when I tested against the kit 18-55 performs notably better - in particular around the borders and with much less CA/fringing.

Some photos:

















The lens comes complete with original Pentax front cap (also mint), generic but decent rear cap, mint Marumi DHG lens protect filter, and a generic metal hood.

Price for the whole lot is £60 incl RM Special Delivery within the UK (plus PayPal fee if that is how you choose to pay). I'm away for the weekend but will check here before Thurs/Fri and be back on Tues.

PM me if you have any questions.

Jon

I use SmugMug. It offers lots of controllability in how your images and gallery are displayed, allows you to upload photographs up to 12MB each, and if you pay extra allows larger than that and storage of RAW files.

Linking to other places such as here is a doddle.

In addiition it's easy to control who is able to view which images, and far-flung family members are able to download at very high quality or order prints. Being able to upload direct to SmugMug from PSE organiser saves hassle too (as long as you tell it you are in America rather than England!).

I back up any photos I want to keep on to SmugMug as well as having a backup hard drive at home.

I also have a Flickr account, but now used largely for infrared shots - I don't like how Flickr resizes images when you upload.

I've seen some decent enough shots out of the Takumar - it's not as good as the SMC-K, but it shouldn't be terrible. Sounds like something is wrong with it.

I'd consider micro four thirds - the image quality is vastly superior to small sensor cameras as soon as you head up the ISO range, and the Oly Pen and Lumix GF1 are reasonably compact (esp paired with pancake lenses).

As shipped (Option 1), when you use the buttons surrounding the OK button, you will call up the options as marked on the buttons (WB, timer, flash, etc). To choose AF points, you need to press OK first and you can then use the other buttons to scroll the AF point around the screen to where you want it.

Option 2 allows you to change the AF points using those buttons without pressing OK first - whereas you do need to press OK to get at the other shooting parameters (WB, flash, etc).

So you can choose whether it is more important to you to change the shooting parameters (option 1) or the AF point (option 2) without first pressing OK.

Hope this helps,

Jon

I've owned the 55-300 and 50-200 WR as well as Tamron 70-300.

The one I've kept is the 50-200, because it is very compact and the WR is important to me (I have both WR kit lenses for British weather related reasons!).

That said, I think the best bang for the buck is the Tamron (and I note there is one on offer in the classifieds here for £85) which has a nice macro ability, decent build, and is pretty sharp too. Main downside is that it can give you some nasty purple fringing on occasion that needs to be processed out on the computer.

The best lens optically is the 55-300 - similarly sharp to the Tamron with less of the fringing. It does perform better than the 50-200 at 200mm, but is obviously quite a lot larger.

I found the 55-300 to be rather sluggish at focussing at longer lengths - it hunted terribly on occasion - so personally, I would prefer to go for the more expensive version with quick shift over-ride - I used this a lot.

Hope this helps,

Jon

Glad it arrived safely - enjoy!

Had the chance to go to the British Triathlon in Hyde Park last weekend. It's astonishing what these athletes do - the winner managing a 1500m swim, 40km bike ride and 10km run in 1 hour and 42 minutes!

I decided to take the Tokina 80-400 with me, and all of these shots have had very little in the way of PP. Earlier on when it was brighter, I was shooting JPEG, when the ISO had to go up, I switched to RAW. No noise processing has been done, because I reckoned these shots were good enough without it.

Very much looking forward to going back next year - very exciting event to watch.

This is Alastair Brownlee having a bit of "me time" before the event:


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From the grandstand, views of the swim were a little hard to come by - but this one proves it happened:


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Lots of excitement when Brownlee was first to emerge from The Serpentine:


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Proof that it is possible to get a sharp shot out of the Tokina at 400mm - as long as you stop it down a fair way (f11 in this case):


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Fancy a quick ride?


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About to enter the final stage:


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Brownlee brothers with eventual winner Gomez in hot pursuit:


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Gomez coming to the finish line and realising that there is nobody else in sight! K-7 at unusable ISO1600 (no noise reduction):


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Frodeno came in third place - here he is just a few yards from the finish:


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All over:


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Now what they all need is the WR kit lens!


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Cheers,

Jon

This would be my personal preference too. However, I reckon I have a good copy of the kit lens and would still comment that its weakest performance is widest angle and wide open. If you think you'd use a 16-45 mostly below 20mm and closer to f4, then I reckon that is where you'd see the biggest improvement in image quality compared to the 18-55.

I have previously noted that some of their lenses look like they've fallen off the back of a lorry, and then been run over by the full double-decker bus that was following....