that's certainly what it looks like on those charts, but my point was that I don't believe that's what people have been reporting in real life.

of course it could be people who have spent large amounts of money not wanting to believe they made a booboo, but surely at least one person would have turned around and said "hold on, this is no better than my K10D and the DR is actually worse".

Anyone own a K10 AND a K20? fancy sheding some light?

The FA 80-320 is my primary walking around wildlife lens. As Manesty says, it's a little soft beyond 250 but not unusably so. What you don't want to be doing is zooming right in and hoping to crop very much. If you can get the subject to fill the frame at 320, you will probably be very happy with the result. Especially if you stop down to ~F8.

The new DA 55-300 is a better lens on digital in all respects, but the FA 80-320 is no slouch and using it for now will save you £200.

does anyone else find it interesting that the K10D seems to beat the K20D in almost every class on that test?

I thought the K20D was widely regarded to have better noise performance and dynamic range than its predecessor?

like all lens makers, they make gems and they make lemons.

I have old Tamron Adaptall 90mm SP Macro and 300mm F2.8 SP lenses. Both are very fine pieces of glass which work a treat with my K10D now that I have the KA mount for them.

Back in my film days I briefly owned a cheap and nasty Tamron 28-80 Aspherical, and that was pretty dire. Saying that though, it was very cheap and not unusably bad.

On the whole I think Tamron do a very good job making decent quality lenses at a good price.

Serif Photoplus will open PEFs (at least one version of it does, I can't remember which version my Dad has), but there's no good reason to do so as it offers no options whatsoever when doing so and just opens them like jpgs.

It's a pretty handy editor, nothing very special, it does have one very nice feature though and that is the "print multiple" function. This allows you to arrange multiple photos (or multiple copies of one photo) at defined sizes on a sheet of paper. Best photo printing system I've come across. Again, I can't remember if this came in version 8, 9 or 10.


my advice, since you have been given photoplus 9 for nothing, is to play with it and see what you think. If it does what you want, why shell out money for something else?

the 18-250 didn't last long, wasn't it only released earlier this year?

they seem to be quite hit and miss, often cut down from film SLR screens so the prism ends up well oversize. Heres hoping you get a good one!

actually on a non-electronic body an FAJ or DA lens will always be stopped down to minimum. In a bizare twist it does still meter correctly though, never could figure out why Pentax bothered to do that.

Simply put Hefty, you know how we have to use M series lenses in stop down mode? a non crippled mount camera body wouldn't have to do that, since it would include the lever which tells the camera where the aperture ring is set.

the sticky apperture is a common fault on older lenses. I'm not familiar with the lens you mention, but if it is a good one then it should be reparable. If it's a really good one it might even be worth it.

I have noticed this with my K10D, but every time I have attempted a vaguely rigourous test I have been forced to conclude that I just suck at leveling my camera by eye.