About my bee day . . . I look after a few neighbouring properties whilst their owners are shivering in the UK winter (foolish people).

When I visited one of them today I discovered it had been nominated as the local watering hole for quite a large number of bees. Several hundred, if not thousands of bees were using my neighbours swimming pool as a source of liquid refreshment.

The brown/black blobs in the following shot is not dirt on my sensor. Each is a bee. Some flying in, some flying out, some drinking, and sadly, some drowning.

I saved as many as I could by netting them out and leaving them on the terrace to dry out.




EDIT: This image shows a small part of an 8M x 4M pool and more than half of it (the half in the sun) looked like this.

C'mon, it's only a honey bee. Without them we wouldn't need flowers.

I've had a bit of a bee day today. More later . . . .

Which version of the M 28mm 1:2.8 lens do you have?

The version 2 lens is apparently optically superior.

It differs from version one in that the focus ring is larger, the serial number is missing from the front bezel, and it's a little heavier.

Its basically an A series lens, without the A setting on the aperture ring.

Perhaps you'd be better of with a version 2 lens if yours is a version 1.

I can't answer your question directly because I have no experience of the 3.5 variant.

To brighten up your day if you still live in the frozen North . . .

It's Almond blossom time here in Spain.













K20D + grip + SMCP-FA 100mm 1:2.8 Macro + AF160FC ring light.

Yes Nathan, you have to pre-focus manually. The T'C can't cope with the full focus range of every lens ever produced. So some work (not much) has to be done to help the AF system get somewhere close.

I'd still like to see some longer primes. 400mm & 500mm would be great.

The DA* 10-16 would have to be significantly better than the DA 12-24 I already have to make me switch.

You're excused

That's what I thought too.

This is only a rumour so far and the documentation could have been put together by a rumour-monger.

Nice if it's true though.

Shame it's not 1:2.8 though to match the 16-50 and 50-135 lenses.

The F and FA versions are optically identical. The FA has an anti-creep brake (focus clamp) which the F version lacks.

Both are excellent lenses. I can't remember if the front element of the F version rotates making it tricky to use a ring light. The front element of the FA version doesn't rotate.