LOL I'm not a member of any, and photo forums already take up too much of my time. I feel it's somewhat irrelevant which are the best, the most photogenic is what matters, and if they don't work well it might reduce the number that get lost.

Thanks Mike I'll pop in if I see a branch, I think I can afford the investment .

Mike, I find the two tone design of your second peg shot adds a lot.
Where did you get them from? Clothes pegs can claearly be useful for lenses testing.

You may have made another convert

Ken have you had a chance to try it yet? As we're all eagerly waiting your review

I have a similar model going to micro 4/3, (not a KIWI one) mine is very stiff to mount on both lens & body sides, but the comments I've seen on the mu4/3 site suggests they are very variable.

Looks to me like it has quite a long stalk, so with only a breath of wind it will move significantly. As Jetsam1 was particularly concerned that he was not nailing focus a wide aperture & fast speed is the best way to tell.
Possibly more useful if the object was to get the DOF improved would be to focus on one of the petals further back near the middle of the flower, so as to use DOF both before & behind the point of focus, though a stop or two would probably been worthwhile too.
For Jetsam1's purpose the shot works well, focus looks fine to me, though a 100% crop might show a minor discrepancy.

There aren't any affordable autofocus lenses significantly longer than the 75-300 you already have. There are a few options for around £700-1000, but many if not all use in lens motors that the k100d can't operate.

Even with older 'legacy' lenses the decent options are generally expensive, but mirror lenses do give you a possibilty. I've used both 500mm & 600mm mirror lenses with my k100d and got some good results for motorsport with both. Most lenses of this type go for £50-150.
DOF is very limited with such long lenses, and mirrors don't give an aperture control to help.

Another option is to link your camera to a telescope. Spotting scopes are the most portable option, but good ones are also expensive! I tried a cheap Tasco 'world class' which gives an effective 1000mm f16 zooming to 4000mm f64. Again no aperture control, and it is usable at the short end, but not worth zooming.

Unfortunately personal preference of the judges can have a much bigger effect than it should. I've heard tales of a local judge that always marks down pictures of cats... Judges are human so this is only to be expected to some extent.

I'm lucky enough to have both the 55-300 and the 150-500. The 55-300 is light enough to live in my camera bag (much lighter than my old F100-300) whilst the Bigmos is heavy enough that it stays at home much of the time. When I have it with me it does brilliantly, even if it is less than 10% of the time, the difference it makes at airshows, motor racing, and with wildlife makes it worth the cost.
Thinking about it, the Bigmos may only be with me 5% of the time I've got my camera, but it's with me for nearer 30% of the photo's I've taken in the last year...

Laminating work well.
Every year our photo workshop exhibits at the Tendring Hundred show. Doing this the prints have to be put up the night before, and left in an unheated tent. Before laminating the prints used to curl up. Now we laminate them & they look good. After the show I've used some of my prints as place mats, and they've not suffered even then.
My wife has put up in the kitchen a trimmed copy, of one of the prints where the printer messed up, Within a few weeks parts of the ink where running.

I'm not saying a laminated print looks as good as a properly mounted print, but in poor conditions it lasts much better than anything less than a top notch frame.

Classic shots!
TFS

Indeed, the sync speed is the fastest speed at which the shutter is fully open, at shutter speeds faster than this the second curtain starts travelling before the first curtain has reached the end of the frame. Firing the flash at any point with such an arrangement will only illuminate part of the sensor. (Google focal plane shutters, and you should find much clearer explainations)

Those flashes that offer a higher sync speed use multiple flashes to cover the entire frame. It could be if photographing high speed action that this will give multiple images each 1/1000s appart.

In normal flash photography the duration of the flash is effectively the duration of the photo, though fill-in flash & second curtain work also use light recorded from outside the flash duration, with the balancing done by shutter speed.

Both are nice but I prefer the sea in Mike's version whilst the sky is better in Dave's...
Can't you arrange the weather right?