wow. Just wow.

Not everyone will necessarily realise how impressive this is. Before the invention of adaptive optics this image would have been physically impossible even with the mighty 8 meter telescopes.

The atmosphere blurs the image so that anything above about 20" diameter is essentially just a bigger light bucket, you don't really get a resolution increase because the dominating factor is atmospheric blurring.

I had one of these for a while and compared it to my 50-200.

I found the 50-200 to have higher contrast, but the 70-210 to be slightly sharper.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that the difference was not as significant as the difference in size between the two lenses, so I kept the 50-200 which is smaller.

For me it came down to a choice between 135 format coverage and an aperture ring and portability. Since I have an FA 80-320 for when size doesn't matter too much, I went for the more portable 50-200.

To my knowledge there has never been a lens adaptor which worked well, the best anyone has managed is the K-M42 adaptor and Tamron's Adaptall system.

M42 is a very basic system and Adaptall was designed from the ground up to be adaptable, yet it is still a pain in the behind to swap lenses on unless you have one mount per lens.


For Pentax to change mounts at this stage would be most unwise, they have invested a lot in backwards compatibility

There may be a student rate for whatever the Netherlands version of the National Union of Journalists is. I get a discount on my Institute of Physics fees for being a student, it seems analogous to me (although alas my IOP card wont help much if the cops want to stop me taking photos, they're more likely to haul me away as a mad scientist!)

certainly manufacturing counterfeit lenses to a standard where there's a chance people might not notice would be crazy expensive. It would probably be cheaper to buy the real thing!

More plausible that it's desirable old lenses like say a 50mm f/1.2 (take a 1.4 and change the numbers)?

Like you hefty I think it seems strange.

edit: Sorry hefty, that last sentance was rather derogatory to you for a moment there!

Similarly the Brain is also very good at photoshop.

A few years ago I spent some time groveling around in the grass with a Pentax 110, trying to get a particular wide angle shot of a building from low level. Eventually I was satisfied that I had the shot I wanted and moved on.

When the film came back I had got the angle right enough, but several very tall blades of grass ran right up the middle of the building in the extreme foreground. I could swear they were not there when I framed the shot, but clearly they must have been. Unfortunately my concious mind is not as good at photoshop as my subconcious, and I was unable to save the shot.


In another example, my Gran has a blind spot caused by a blood clot in her retina years ago. She tells me that when it first happened it was very annoying, but that now she never notices it except when she is somewhere she hasn't been before, her brain doesn't know what to fill in into the blank.

Interesting. Recently I was on holiday in Gran Canaria (anyone who's been to the Canarys will know what their camera salesmen are like).

To my barely concealed surprise when one of them spotted my SLR around my neck his imediate response was "ahh, Pentax, you look, I have many Pentax lens".

Now generally speaking these people are the type who will try and argue that whatever they are selling is better than whatever you have, in the face of any and all evidence to the contrary. They are also known for selling large numbers of Nickon, Cannon, Pantex and Ollompus cameras.

I am now even more happy than I already was that I did not go and look at his lenses.

mmm and I thought wasps were the natural enemies of spiders...

I don't know of a more concise reference than Bojidar, but if you have specific features in mind I'm pretty sure I know the *ist models feature set off the top of my head in more detail than 99% of people could ever be interested in (I bought a DL2, and I like to do my research before a purchase!).

whilst I acknowledge that it would (probably) not have made the difference in the final score, I feel sorry for Frank Lampard.

The rest of them should eat fewer pies, every game I saw them play they were being comprehensively outrun by their opponents. The best right boot in the world is no use if it's at the opposite end of the pitch from the ball.