Am sorely tempted to shoot a few rolls of film - I haven't done so since I was at school (! and that's about 20 years ago now... time flies) - I covet a Pentax 67ii but can't quite justify it (or indeed afford it) yet... Today (or yesterday now) it was K-7 and sigma 100-300 mostly, although I did a little experimenting with a raynox 250 on the end of my old sigma 70-300 with pretty dubious results... the DOF is devastatingly thin...

Regards

There certainly seem to be a couple of variants of the 70-200 sigma available on the SRS website - the non-OS version (from the blurb) is also non-HSM in Pentax fit and looks to be still available - SRS will know for sure. I think that the Tamron is non-OS and non-HSM in it's most recent guise for Pentax as well - SRS look pretty competitive on price for that as well -worth a look at least.

I could be wrong - I am sure someone will correct me if so...

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I agree with Techno and Andrew... I tend to take a lot of shots of birds on the water, with varying levels of success. I think here you have captured a somewhat different view to the average 'portrait'-type shot, and the light is appealing - looks as if the swan is caught in a ray of light. the darkening in the corners helps with this as well (although maybe the black in the top right is slightly heavy (or maybe I am just being picky ).

I went on a couple of photo op days with the wildlife photographer Chris Weston and he has a maxim along the lines of... if the only title you can think to ascribe to a picture is the name of the animal, then maybe try to find a different angle... hopefully you get the drift - anyway I think you would pass that 'test' with this picture - very pleasing overall to my mind.

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Mat W

I agree with Stefan - something like the 16-50 or 17-70 would be ideal, coupled with a decent flash. I have 'shot' one wedding (not something I am in a rush to do again:shock, and used the 16-50 exclusively, along with a 540 flashgun...

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Echo all the above - a cracker!

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What a splendid set of shots, and a great way to show them... I very much like the whole set although the second shot (spiky looking plants) really stood out for me. Excellent stuff as usual.

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That's a beautiful shot and a fantastic result from the kit lens. Like Flossie I am not particularly struck by the purple/red colour clash. Lovely looking moth though, not seen one of those before - looks almost golden!

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Thanks for comment and especially the info Jon

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Great stuff! - well done!

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I thought that John Shaw's nature photography field guide was really helpful. Although it is entitled as 'nature/wildlife photography' it is pretty much relevant to any kind of photography and deals in a logical way with the building blocks (as he sees them) of photography...

It's available on amazon:
link

I found it helpful in any case

Regards