It was the Pentax DA 35mm f2.8 Macro. I guess the ants were about 2 inches from the lens front element.

Do not try this with a scorpion!

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Far and away the best way to follow focus for sports is to do it manually.

With practise it's nowhere near as hard as it sounds.

Yes, they did that back at the office. You'd have an appointment with a despatch rider at a given spot who'd take your (and your colleagues) film from you.

Some of the pic eds I've worked with have had an incredible eye for picking out the best 5 pix from maybe 400 frames in a minute or two.

One of them, called Alan Reid was pic ed on the London Evening News and I would genuinely prefer him to pick out and mark up my stuff than do it for myself. Never taken a picture in his life which cleared his mind of all the rubbish technicalities that bog us photographers down. All he saw was the picture - which is all a photograph is about, in the end

The DA 35mm is not too bad.

I just popped this off in the garden, it's hand held at 1/45th second f8 so it's not perfect, should have been stopped down to f16 or f22 but as you can see the lens is worth consideration at least.

I find it a very capable GP lens as well.

No, not really. Most photogs would carry two or three bodies. I'd use 3 Nikon Fs with 35, 28 and 21mm lenses on them. You'd reload in a lull but always had a loaded body to hand anyway.

And as Al says, you wouldn't just hose away at anything, you'd pick your shots because woe betide a photographer who sent back 10 films with 2 good pix on them. If you had 4 photogs on the story, someone back at the office had to wade through all their stuff looking for the gems. That took time and that's what no-one had enough of!

The best photogs sent back fewest films with most good pix.

I sometimes imagine I'd kept all my old equipment and what fun it would be to play with it.

The Canon rangefinder with the underlever film wind, the old VN plate camera I trained with, the Nikon F with motor drive and 21mm 'riot' lens where you had to lock the mirror up and use a Leitz finder, the Pentax Spotmatic with 35mm f2 lens.

And the beautiful Hasselblad stuff, especially the 150mm Sonnar. All gone and where did the money go?

I wonder if I'll ever feel any nostalgia over my digital stuff?

Ultra wide and not expensive don't go together, unfortunately

Pentax have nothing faster that goes to 250mm. They have the 50-135 f2.8 but that probably isn't long enough for what you want.

Your only other option from the Pentax range would be the 200mm f2.8.

Sigma do a 70-200mm f2.8 as do Tamron. As far as I know no maker does a zoom faster than f4 that goes beyond 200mm.
It would be a monster size!

You need to be looking at a 300mm 2.8 otherwise but you'll need deep pockets since they start at around £2500.

I have a 60-250 and it has as advanced a spec as any from any maker, more so than most since it holds its f4 aperture across the whole zoom range. F4 is actually very fast for such a lens and I can vouch that its quality is excellent. Focus speed and tracking ability is superb - it has the motor built in to it - no worries in that respect.

But anyway, you shouldn't be getting so much noise at 800 iso. I'd keep the 60-250 and invest in a copy of Noise Ninja if were you.

Both cameras have a 2.7" lcd screen. The body differences are cosmetic and there are some differences in the menu system.

I think most people would agree that therer are hardly any functional differences and no performance differences at all.

I agree with benjikan in a way about keeping the K10, though I eBayed my GX10 and got £199 for it.
Since I only paid £299 for the new GX20, I felt in my case the new camera was almost paid for.