Just back from a few days up in the North West of Scotland myself. I wish I'd know the theme was going to be water before I got back though as I'd have looked harder for a suitable entry!

There are some cheap/fast options as well - my fastest lens is a old K-mount 55mm F1.2 Porst that cost next to nothing on Ebay. Ok it's not the sharpest wide open but it does work. An Pentax 50mm F1.2 would be nice but those tend to make serious cash 2nd hand - as does the FA* 85mm F1.4.

[quote="MattMatic"]I'd have thought that was definitely a consideration in this case.

That's what I bought mine for.

I've owned a monopod (one of the Manfrotto ones) for at least a decade now however I'd be surprised if it's had a dozen outings in all that time.

It's definitely an improvement on hand-holding but not by as much as I'd expected (perhaps I don't have long enough lenses) and also, IMHO, not as much as the K10D's image stabiliser. In low light conditions I usually find something to brace myself against and I think that works at least as well as a monopod as well.

What subject where you shooting? One option might be to shoot raw and deliberately underexpose the image to get a higher shutter speed - later fixing the exposure on the computer.

I didn't have a shot worth using in this category so I decided to shoot something specifically for the competition, and as our kitchen tap was dripping...




Pentax K10D, Vivitar 55mm F2.8 Macro, AF360FGZ flash, 1/180s@F16, ISO400, camera hand-held, flash in auto-mode and hot-shoe mounted, white reflector

True, however even 3rd party coatings are very good these days.

Yes.

So are you, given you've just bought a 16-50 F2.8, even if it does have Pentax badges on...

I've had 3 Tokina ATX-Pro lenses for many years, including the 28-70 F2.6-2.8 and not had compatability problems with any Pentax SLR or D-SLR so far.

In this case it sounds like the issue probably does relate to the electrical contacts between the lens and camera not making a good connection. Check the contacts on the lens to see if the central connector any any of them is depressed further than it should be - I've seen that a couple of times with lenses (including Pentax's own ones).

For the AF problem can you check the focus ring is in the AF position and not MF (the ATX-Pro's are like the FA* Pentax lenses in having a focus ring with two positions so that it doesn't rotate when in AF) - I got my ATX-Pro 20-35mm F2.8 cheap because the person selling it on Ebay though the AF didn't work when it was just because they had the focus ring in the wrong position.

I seem to recall having a Tamron adaptall mount a few years back that was Pentax & Ricoh fitting. It nearly jammed on one of my AF bodies (can't recall which one) but worked fine on the MF ones.

Apparently not $1400 US (plus 22% VAT!) though as the lens didn't sell.