Just out of interest, I've bought 4 lenses from SRS in the last few months, before the price hikes.

Bought now, they would have cost me £746 more than I paid for them. In fact, I wouldn't have bought them at those prices.

Life must be getting difficult for the dealers, though.

One little caution. If you intend to buy more lenses later on, many Pentax ones are at absurd prices nowadays compared with other makers.

I have all the lenses I need but if I were buying into a system now, I'd probably choose another system for that reason alone.

No offence, anyone, purely my personal and honest advice.

That started happening in the mid 80s. Before that at the Rainbow or Hammersmith Odeon and the other London gigs, you'd be one of only five or six photographers allowed in the orchestra pit but allowed to stay for the whole time.

Plus, no restrictions on their use, full copyright remained with the photog. Those were the days. I stopped covering live gigs when the restrictions started to come in.

A great deal of my library income comes from those gigs still , Abba, The who, Dire Straits, Rod Stewart et al.

I don't know how anyone can make a living from it these days with all the competition climbing all over one another and flogging their work for peanuts. I guess I'm just getting soft in my old age

Funny how we all differ. I bought my first brace of Leicas back in the 70s, for their speed of use compared to the Nikons, especially in low light where the beautiful Canon 35mm 2 came into its own.

You could whack straight in on focus in the most appalling light in situations where using flash was impossible - or if there were large and violent people around, inadvisable!

In those cases, too, the virtually silent shutter was a big bonus.

I wish I'd kept more of this stuff but it just seemed like tools when you earned your living with it

A photographer with ideas, perseverance, personality, contacts and reliability will always make money, regardless of the camera.
The real world requirements to be a professional photographer are no different to any other business person.

My main question would be if any ambitious photographer would be able to carry a proper business without medium format equipment, digital or not. That would be my first priority, rather than splashing out on a new Nikon system.

These are tough times, though. so good luck.

A bit of a mess really! iptc fields can be all over the place too, with different software interpreting them differently.

But then the same applies to ID3 tags for MP3s. It's usually to do with a big company trying to bend the standards to its way of doing things, it seems.

What they miss is that unless a standard is rigidly applied and only extended by industry agreement, they weaken it, not improve it.

Too late now, though

That's a brillant and clear exposition - thank you.

There aren't half some clever folk around here, aren't there?

I downloaded PhotoMe today and the version and build is the same as yours.

I was referring to the Oggy's picture, following the thread. You seem to be reporting the results on a different picture, of a swan, so I am now very confused.

Does your version report this differently from mine?

Does anyone know where the exif information comes from if the same lens is described differently in different programs? The lens must transmit some ID to the camera for the camera to know what it is at all.

My copy of PhotoMe reports your lens exactly the same as Exiftool, by the way, Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG Macro HSMll.
That's why I thought the lens reported its own information. But your copy of PhotMe reports it differently? Very odd!

I wonder that too.

None of the extras do anything that you cannot do for yourself. They just obviate the need for practise and technical know-how.

Personally, I feel that if you do learn to hold the camera still for yourself, ascertain the exposure manually, focus manually and so on, you learn something important about your tools and yourself. Does it matter? Who knows?

And if your camera does have SR, it's really annoying if it doesn't work.