I find myself wishing there was more 'context'... more of the landscape on the right hand side. The shot falls between a landscape shot and a close up really. Nice scene though. Reminds me of a frozen Kinder Downfall!

You've got £500 to spend, so I would advise getting a dedicated macro like the very well reviewed Tamron 90mm. But on a much more modest budget, you can do a lot with extension tubes. The manual ones can be bought for small change but unfortunately the viewfinder goes very dark when you stop down (which must be done manually via the aperture ring):

Extension tube plus Pentax 50mm:


Extension tube plus Sigma MiniwideII 24mm:

No recommedation re brands, but my Western Digital 'MyPassport' is a vast improvement over the 'MyBook' I had before - smaller, quieter, and more convenient as it's USB powered and pocket sized.

That's me, and my old DL2 in a rare 'hood-free' moment. I assume the hood had popped off in the bag during the three hour crawl through lava caves which preceded this shot

Perhaps the man at the airshow was also in too much of a hurry to rettach the hood.

This type of DSLR is something a lot of users seem to pine for, perhaps as a second lightweight body to their K20 or K7. The other thing people seem to pine for is a black and white only DSLR. A back to basics, black and white body would be a bold move, and it probably wouldn't be cheap, but it would be a unique prospect and irresistable to many enthusiasts - and might bring a lot of Nikonians and Canon users into the Pentax brand

You couldn't call it another 'me too' camera!

C is my favourite. Presume all the methods rely on a bit of user control, which adds a variable which makes it hard to say how much is down to the general technique!

My bugbear with B&W conversion is blotchy noise, and non-smooth gradations in tones, in skies. At the size you have posted these issues aren't visible though; although C is smoother overall which looks encouraging.

To be fair, that is asking rather a lot of any AF system! I hope you were riding pilion

Under those circumstances, putting aside that I'd probably be more concerned with holding on than taking pictures, I think I'd shoot high ISO and small aperture in continuous shooting mode, and hope for the best! I'd probably use manual focus but that's probably just me. Your pictures from Vietnam are excellent if I may say so, I really enjoyed looking at them on your website.

It's a London Plane, almost certainly... beautiful shot

I have found the metering with K lenses to be reasonable.. occasionally a half to a stop out, but very usable.

However shutter speeds longer than 3" are simply not available, which explains Niklas's problem of gross underexposure.

Speaking personally, I find text-speak a lot more understandable