That's the lens I was after for a long time. It's arguably the best macro lens ever produced by any manufacturer.

I settled for the Sigma 180mm 1:3.5 EX DG Macro as it was the nearest I could find to 200mm. It also serves very well as a normal mid-range AF telephoto.

It's definitely one of the Iris family of plants. It has the characteristic triangular petal arrangement. I can't identify exactly which one though. In UK they are often found growing in still water; ponds & river margins, etc.

We also have yellow, blue, and white 'Flags', which grow in normal garden soil.

Nice pics Mike, but I think the first two are of a hover fly. They are not as hairy as bees and contribute much less, if any, to plant pollenation.

Notice the black head and eyes of the bee compared to the brown eye of the hover fly. They carry their wings slightly differently when at rest too.

The first is my favourite.

There have been a number of versions of this lens. Mine is an APO Macro Super which can only be switched to Macro at 300mm. My son has an APO Macro Super II in Canon mount and it's macro function works between 200-300mm.

The FA-J 55-300mm was probably my least favourite Pentax lens and I sold mine after owning it for just a couple of weeks (bought and sold on that auction site).

My Sigma 70-300mm APO Macro gives better results and has the added bonus of macro capability; ratio 1:2 (I think) at 300mm.

I used Driver Detective yesterday to resolve an issue my son was having.

Since he bought it, his Canon ip4500 printer has refused to work on his Acer Power FH machine. Every time he tried to do anything sensible with the printer, the PC crashed and gave no indication or clue anywhere (including logs) to the reason.

Driver Detective found some 25 out of date drivers, including chipset drivers, and recommended replacements. These I downloaded, re-installed the printer, and was able for the first time to print a proper image from it without the PC crashing.

I suspect it was the old USB drivers that caused the issue, but I was so impressed with the software I thought i'd share my enthusiasm here.

You can find it at http://www.drivershq.com/Home.aspx

It's not free, but at $29.95 + $9.95 for 2 years of updates, I thout it was worth it.

Commercial note: I have no personal or commercial involvement of any kind with this vendor or their software. I'm just a satisfied user of Device Detective.

The Sigma can be used on FF SLR's with no vignetting. The same is unlikely to be true of the Pentax lens.

I have one and whilst I don't use it very much, I've never been disappointed with the results from it. It has been criticised for being soft when used wide open at the long end of the zoom range.

You should have said earlier that you were after one. I was in Alicante last week, I'd have bought mine over for you to try.

I think you can be pleased with a 10% keeper rate and you have some good shots considering the difficult circumstances.

It would certainly appear that the noise immunity of the K20D is vastly superior to the K10D, which I continually find disappointing. Maybe it's time for me to upgrade . . . again.

I've tried taking pics at music venues (tribute bands mostly) with much less success, even with my SMCP 50mm 1:1.2 and DA* 16-50mm 1:2.8 lenses.

Well done.

For UK telly programmes I rely solely on what's available from BBC/iPlayer, 4 On Demand, and ITV's catchup service for my TV. I'm hoping the latter will have a download service available soon.

I do also have spanish digital free-to-view TV too. The english language programmes (CSI etc) are all dubbed, but then I use the language button to switch back to english.

Oh the joys of the digital age . . . and it's all free too, save for the cost of broadband.

This all begs the question:-

If you watch only TV programmes delivered via t'internet, and have no traditional television receiver, do you need to cough up for a TV licence?