My wallet twitches badly whenever I see one of the Tokina ATX 80-400's on Ebay! I've resisted so far but its probably only a matter of time...

Very nice shot but having owned one of the FA powerzooms back in the day I'd have to say I was never all that impressed with it. Like many lenses though it should benefit from the cropping factor of APS-C as it'll them lose the corners and edges where performance is weaker.

My first two Pentax lenses were power zooms (28-80 & 100-300 - used with a Z50p) and believe it or not they were one of the key reasons I bought into Pentax (I didn't know much about cameras or lenses in those days)! I never really found power-zoom anything more than a gimmick though and prefered manual zooming. Now I don't have either of the lenses although I do still have the Z50p.

The equivalent lens I have these days is the Sigma 70-300 APO and it's better than the powerzoom 100-300 in every way - including build quality.

I did consider chucking it on Ebay but I'm still hoping Pentax will bring out a full-frame DSLR and it'd be a great general purpose lens if they do!

I've got one of the Sigma 24-135mm F2.8-4 lenses - I bought mine new from a US Ebay seller and I seem to recall it was quite cheap - I recall a couple of other posters here also buying one at around the same time.

I used it for a while in combination with a Sigma 10-20 to give me a decent general purpose 2-lens kit however since getting the Pentax 16-45 I haven't used it anything like as much. Overall I've found it a pretty decent performer optically plus it also has a fairly fast max aperture throughout its zoom range. I can't recall using it much on my K10D however on my DS there were certainly no compatibility issues and it's a pleasant lens to use. The zoom ring operates the opposite way from normal but that doesn't take much getting used to. It AF's fine with a 2x TC as well, which is useful.

The Pentax 24-90 is supposed to be very good however the last one I noticed on Ebay went for something over £200.

The Tamron 18-250 seems to get good reviews and as it's around £300 it's not that much over the price range you mentioned. The Tamron 18-200 is £250 - no idea what that's like though.

The Sigma is a 300mm lens whether it's used on a DSLR or a film SLR, however due to the cropping effect of the smaller APS-C DSLR sensor size it's effectively the same as a 450mm lens would have been with 35mm film. The same is true of your 55-200 - at the 200mm end on a DSLR it's equivalent to what a 300mm lens would have given you on a film SLR. The fact that's a digital only lens isn't relevant.

BTW the Sigma 70-300's all work on both film or DSLR bodies.

I don't really understand the question about a 70-300 Pka lens though as that's exactly the same focal length as your existing 70-300 Sigma DG.

The 1.5x convertor should work in MF with an MF lens.

BTW I've tried a 2x TC with my own Sigma 70-300 and AF did function up to about the 250mm setting in decent lighting conditions. It was quite slow however and I've no idea what the results would be like optically.

When I lived in Hong Kong I my office was high up in an office block and another tall building was being built next to it. Even on those types of buildings the scaffolding was bamboo and the workers used to hang off that 30, 40+ stories up. As the construction workers were mainly foreign (mainland China, Phillipines etc) any accidents tended not to be reported in the local papers but it certainly looked pretty dangerous.

Had more than a few of those sorts of situations myself unfortunately. I should stick probably just leave a bag with the DS and a couple of lenses in the back of the car.

That's the sort of think I was thinking about - when I lived in Linlithgow you'd sometimes see a view over the refinery with the Ochils in the background that would have been an impressive "Beauty & The Beast" sort of thing.

Hmm - don't think I have an entry for this currently however I'm not that far from the petrochemical refinery at Grangemouth so I might see if I can get out that way and see what can be done...

Thanks for that - very kind.

Perhaps the ultimate expression of the industrial revolution on a cityscape:




Pentax K10D, DA 10-17mm