I know you've discounted it already, but I can't rate the 55-300 from Pentax highly enough. It's a great balance of image quality, size/weight and price. It would be best option, IMO, if you were able to save up for it.

Teleconverters are a mixed blessing. It really depends on the scenario you need more length in. The trade offs are less light hitting the sensor, any deficiencies in the lens are amplified and you obviously lengthen the wide end of the zoom, which depending on scenario could be detrimental.

If you want to go the teleconverter route, I have one I am about to offer for sale on the forum. That's because I just bought the Pentax HD one. The one I'm offering is a "Jessop" 1.7x which is af compatible.

My apologies, but there's no message in my inbox.

I can be flexible on the price if it helps you out. I never use it anymore but wouldn't want it to go into landfill.

Seeing as you haven't bothered to respond to me, shall I assume you don't want to pursue my offer?

Success is relative. Just because Pentax's market share is small, doesn't mean they aren't succeeding to a sufficient extent to a) keep in business and b) make a profit for their owners.

It means their r&d budget is probably smaller, as is their marketing budget, and as a result it's harder for them to take market share from the big players.

I've sent a PM

Wow, thank you very much!

Thanks. K-5 and DA* 60-250. What I would say though is that most are fairly heavy crops. I have plenty of pictures that I didn't crop, but I find the action a bit less exciting when, particularly the jets, are close enough to fill most of the frame with the 250mm. I would like to buy the Pentax rear converter, and probably will before next year's show. Even then though, the reach will be 350mm, so I will still end up with crops a lot of the time for these type of shots. Despite that they look excellent on my 37" telly so I'm not too worried about the cropping now.

Thanks very much. Were you there on the Sunday? If so, bad luck with this display. That said though, when I did get to see the whole display on Saturday, they didn't spend that much time together I seem to remember. The French had bad luck that show. Patrouille de France had a bird strike on Friday, and then Ramex Delta had a bird strike on Sunday (or perhaps I got the days the wrong way round).

This is something I am aware of. As most of these are heavy crops, it's a very (sub?)conscious decision to centre them up. I will try a few other crops to see how they look. One of the difficulties I had was that there was quite often no cloud to be seen near the aircraft. My favourite shots include aircraft, blue sky and white clouds

Seeing as I'm laid up recovering from knee surgery, I thought I'd finally post up a few pics from this year's RIAT. I took a lot more than these, but I felt the collection below were some of the more fun ones of the bunch.

Taken on Saturday/Sunday with a K-5 and DA* 60-250. Still getting to grips with the metering, so quite a lot of recovery in Lightroom.

Comments and criticism very welcome.

The Ramex Delta display – they had a bird strike on the Sunday so I didn't get many shots of them


BBMF Typhoon and Spitfire synchro pair


Another Spitfire (the BBMF mass flypast was immense)


Vulcan above the Red Arrows (Not a technically good photo, but a nice moment)


Vulcan and Red Arrows flypast


Red Arrows synchro pair


Belgian F-16


Belgian F-16 Dirty Roll

Probably too busy photographing rather than navelgazing!

OK so I was unable to source another lens while out there so had to make do with the 16-50. Before sending it off I thought I would have another go at getting it back to life.

By pulling on the lens barrel gently I was able to get the lens to extend to its full length. Since then it has happily extended and retracted using the zoom ring with absolutely no resistance at all. It's as if the mechanism that converts the rotational motion of the ring into the linear motion of the zoom barrel became disconnected. By pulling it I reengaged it.

Anyway, I'll leave it for now but will probably have it repaired over the coming months.

Hopefully my experience might serve use to someone else that experiences this in future...

It's easy when you know that menu scrolls...! There's absolutely no visual indication that's a scrolling menu.

Thanks for solving the mystery!