Hi Banjo

The Elicar 90mm is made by Kiron and was also marketed as a Panagor 90mm, and Vivitar 90mm. It's sweet spot is f11 which alows for increased DOF, I have the Panagor version and all variations being the same have an excellent reputation as a macro lens. I must admit to loving mine but shooting at f11 does require either a tripod or bumping up the speed, but saying that I've been very supprised and pleased at it's sharpness hand held wide open.

Hi Mike

Are you speaking on behalf of the England players as well , it was the ball, pitch, altitude, I'm tired, booing fans, feel free to add anymore excuses.

Cappello will get the Das Boot and hey presto the new manager will pick exactly the same team and play the same formation again, hey presto we lose again.

Right here we go, the Chancellor has tightened the country's budget, so we'll all be skint for the next 5 years. So I thought I'd start a thread for sub £50 lenses, so we can all get a clearer picture of what a £50 budget will get you, good and bad. The one condition is you must have owned and used the lenses. Of we go:

THE GOOD

Pentax M 50mm f1.7 - just superb all round and £25 of fleabay.

Pentax M 28mm f2.8 - as above.

Super Tak SMC 135mm f3.5 - lovelly colour rendition my favourite, I rate this above the Pentax M 135mm f3.5, £25 again of fleabay.

Helios 44-m 55mm f2 - what can I say, one of my real favourites for peanuts.

Over to you guys to fill in the rest.

THE BAD

Pentax 40-80mm f2.8-4 - Ok but does suffer from severe barrel distortion, particularly on buildings.

Sorry John, I wasn't really intent on raising it either but passion got the better of me.

Oh dear, here we go again, expectations rise and rise then slowly but surely begin to fall again, WHY Oh WHY have we got to suffer this emotional roller coaster again. For once I want to see an England team play on the field like they should do on paper. World class players but not a world class team, why? we can't keep blaming the managers it's something in the mindset of the players who pull on that shirt. Is it something in the shirt which makes great players revert back to bungling fools who have no interest in winning? Where are the Gazzas and the Terry Butchers of yesteryear who played with so much passion and committment? I'm full of despair that we just can't get it right on the world's stage. Before I die I want to see another gold star on the England shirt but at this rate I'm not sure my son will see one in his lifetime either. Ah well, rant over, there' Wednesday to look forward to and a chance for redemption but on last nights performance I somehow doubt it.

Hi George

Originality is such any easy word to use, but unfortunately the concept is much harder to grasp. Being human we all have different levels of originality, ten people may take ten different pictures all convinced they have an original take on the subject matter, but these may appear bland to a third party audience. This is because the internet with it's vast catalogue of images makes original photography very difficult, purely because if you think it's original a quick trawl of the web will convince you that thousands of people have got there before you. Before the advent of the internet the only reference point was books, magazines, etc so there was a smaller refernce point to see how original your images are. To sum up it's the shear volume of people using the digital format and posting images on the web makes originality such a difficult goal to achieve.

Sorry for being a killjoy but I owned and used this at Oulton Park for the BSB and unfortunately I was not impressed, I only managed a few keepers but it was used at or around 200mm when I dropped it down to around 100mm the results picked up. I recently sold it and I'm in the hunt for a 200/300mm prime instead. However this is only my opinion and maybe somebody else has had more consistent results.

Cheers for that Ed being the lens is manual I'll leave it as it is, I can't see any oil on the elements and my latest pics have'nt shown up any smudges, smears etc.

My question is: if there was a collection of photographs laid out on a table taken with various cameras, would we be really able to tell which make had taken which photo, probably not so here endith the argument.