VERY small crop from the new DA*300mm which I'm loving using! The kites this time of year are starting their mating ritual...which is spectacular if you get to see it - could have watched these two all day. Hopefully some better pics in the next day or two!

Having just acquired my DA*300 I'm keeping an eye on these too. But some are going for silly prices at the moment.

Unless I'm lucky enough to acquire one for a fair price I'll hang on and see what Pentax announce later this year... if they do bring out a new one it will certainly drive the price of these second hand ones down.

Goldcrest is superb - and the rest are amazing too. You'd make a good salesman for the 500mm !

Were these taken from a hide - or in open woodland. If the latter, I wonder how transportable you find the Sigma?

Just as an aside, 'Hoodman' had a stand at Focus (although they weren't actually selling anything!)and they were showing a version of the loupe with a fitting that fixed it via the flash bracket for shooting video - and I have to say I was extremely impressed - an amazing difference!!

It's a bit expensive, I think.... but it would certainly make video a real pleasure to do.

There are cheaper versions on eb - but I don't know how good they are

I guess finding one of those would be the first problem....and carrying it would be the second!! Having seen Danny lugging one around I doubt I could cope!!

I just wish they'd hurry up and give some indication of when the 560mm is likely to appear!

Lovely shots... and I agree about the blue tit - that's a great composition!

I very much doubt I will be able to go to Focus without coming away with a new lens! But that has started me thinking.... What Lenses would YOU buy to give you coverage of focal lengths up to 500mm??

Ignoring price (wish we could!) what lenses do you think would give you the best quality images over that range? Would they all have to be primes?

At the moment I've got sigma 8-16,18-250mm,70mm macro and 120-400mm plus pentax 16-45. So that does the job - but I'm not sure about image quality. Top of my list at the moment is the DA*300 (unless the 560mm appears!!) and maybe changing the 120-400 to a 150-500? Would I see improvements with the Pentax DA*60-250??

How would you cover that range of focal lengths??

Please help my LBA!!!!

I have the Sigma 70mm and, as has been said, it's a very sharp lens for Macro.

However, for insects/butterflies/dragonflies I find that there's just not enough magnification to allow a reasonable working distance from them and so tend to use a (much cheaper) Tamron 70-300mm 'macro' instead.

Most of the butterflies on my Flickr pages are with the Tamron, rather than the Sigma.

Just to add that you also need to be careful INSERTING the SD card as well!

I'm not sure how the card is 'gripped' within the slot, but I recently inserted one and a small piece of the plastic from the card got snapped off and lodged into the bottom of the SD card slot. Foolishly, I thought I'd try and get it out myself - which resulted in a heafty repair bill !!

I bought the ix6550 recently, as I thought it was too good to miss and A3+ printer at the price.

Images so far a very good....and match what's on screen pretty closely - even without more than simple monitor calibration.