P.S. the left hand one looks a tad underexposed too but by less than a third of a stop by the looks of things. A bit like my K20.....

I think the lens on the left just has the edge but there isn't much in it.
At 2.8 it appears to have sligtly more contrast and is possibly a smidge sharper looking at the glass vase, though that may be due to the better contrast.
At the other apertures I can't honestly separate them but at f22 I think the right hand lens just has the edge , however slight. ( and possibly at f16, but I can't make my mind up on that one!)
I doubt this helps much, but that's my opinion for what it's worth.

Great Pictures.
I saw this fly over the Isle of Wight yesterday at about 4:30.
Typically it came over seconds after I had got back into the car and put the camera away to get onto the ferry! Probably not much over 100ft and you could see straight into the cockpit. Obviously on its way to the Bournemouth Air Show. And a very impressive sight it was too!

The Pentax 55-300 is very good and not all that expensive. It's a bit hard to offer suggestions without a rough budget.

I was sorely tempted by the same offer! However as I've recently benefitted from the PCworld 12-24 sale, I've decided to hold off.( or face the wrath of 'er indoors)
I'm very interested to know how it performs though. It is said to be very good indeed!


My LBA list is still DA35mm ltd macro, FDA100 and a toss up between the 50 -135 and the DA77 but the price increases have put those off for a year or more!

I would look at My Memory or 7 Day Shop for SD cards. They will be a lot cheaper than a camera shop.

What speed is the card? It may be a write speed issue, the camera may be trying to send data to the card faster than the card can record it. I would want to be using a Class 6 card with the K7 to be on the safe side. ( or at least Class4)

NEVER click on a link to log into any of your accounts.
ALWAYS type the web address in manually and you should be fine. (Unless there's a key logging trojan installed on your machine {which is unlikely ...} so do a virus/security scan from time to time)

I'm new to this macro lark. These are some of my better efforts with this lens. I bought it recently for £70 on ebay and I must say the more I use it the more I like it. It is soooo sharp!
So far I have only ever used it hand held in natural light and my biggest problem is getting things in focus. Being manual focus it's not ideal for fast moving ( or even slow moving) insects, as the depth of field is so shallow. Also the slightest breeze moves whatever the insects are perched on so everything goes in and out of focus. My current solution is just to take loads of pictures and hope some come out in focus but there must be a better way! How do you regular macro users shelter thing from the wind and/or hold things steady. I'll leave additional lighting for another topic, after I've got a decent flash!
Anyway I hope the links work, I'm new to this too.... be as brutal as you like , I can take it!
Bee on clover. I think I should have cropped this a bit.



Bee on Dahlia. I really like the colours on this one.



Hoverfly on thistle. Hmm, not sure about this one. At first I thought the beetles were some sort of fruiting body like blackberrys, but then it dawned on me that thistles don't do that! Then one moved!



And now the ladybirds. I've cropped these, hopefully in the most interesting way. I've included the original uncropped pictures for two of them so you can make up your own mind and offer "constructive" criticism....
Ladybird 1 cropped



and uncropped



Ladybird 2 cropped



and uncropped



and finally......
Ladybird 3. This one was blowing in the breeze a bit so if I knew how, it would be the perfect candidate for focus stacking the multitude of attempts at this one...

Where?