Bought another lens from that wonderful site - a Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro - all for £50 .

Its a 172E which I think is the older version of the current lens but it looks in perfect nic and works perfectly.
Went out this morning and snapped a few this morning and it looks one cool lens.

2.5s f20 100 90mm



1/125s 2.8 100 90mm



1/6s 6.3 100 90mm



Might be even good for the odd portrait
1/320s 7.1 100 90mm



Anybody know what the full and limit switch is for? Think I saw on here once its something to do with focusing??

[quote="Daniel Bridge....Robby, what have you done to the hillside? Looks completely solarized. : And I don't agree that the 'lens bend' needs correcting, to me just looks like a super-wide-angle shot....[/quote]Yep I masked out that sky and it grabbed a hold of the hilside too then I tweaked it way up - I liked it When you vertically lens correct you lose the top or the bottom so the resulting crop does 'squash' it in. To compensate for this you have to snap ultra wide bit knowing you're gonna lose some of it.
...but got to admit it was 1 in the morning dead tired, eyes squiffy, and it was only a quick bash at it in PS.

Shoot in raw and fiddle if you're gonna be doing shots like these
Real nice pics.

Going to be critical hope you dont mind and just my newbie opinion.

Number 1 maybe crop a bit of the bottom and give us that big 'V' shape of a sky
Number 2 could be just those fab mountains and the sky or maybe a bit less path. Pity you couldnt get some more detail into that big brown lump of a hillside on the left. Couldav been done maybe as a HDR image.
Number 3 has a load of 10-20 lens bend and could do with a drop of lens correction in CS3 if youve got it. Also its a bit flat and could do with lifting a whole lot. Looks like the reds been punched up a lot looking at the items on board ship.

Hope you dont mind - lens corrected that last one and poked it into B&W.




How come we never spot things like that scourer till we're pouring over our shots on a computer screen.

Good shots - I like em

Thanks for that km - I've learnt something today
The near half moon round glass of the outer element and the filter in a vertical plane - makes sense when you think about it.

By the way km, your infrared gallery is bl**dy fantastic

Hi - No, should I have? I've not got any filters at all.

Only thing I did use was my legs as I got chased off from inside that Tate and Lyle plant by some jobsworth security guard

Working down the dock road and snapped a few against a wonderful big blue sky.
The colour and clarity of an early spring blue sky doesn't half perk my spirits up

1/400 5.6 100 10mm (Sigma 10-20)



1/400 5.6 100 11mm (Sigma 10-20)



1/400 5.6 100 10mm (Sigma 10-20)



1/400 4.0 100 10mm (Sigma 10-20)

I've the Sigma 10-20 and I know you've sort of decided upon the Pentax 12-24 but looking through all my shots with this wideagle, most we're snapped at 10mm so I'd really think about that Pentax losing 2 to the Sigma. Granted its probably built better and has better colours but 2 lost at the wide end is much more noticable than the far. I'd want even wider but that'd probably be entering fish-eye territory which the Sigma isn't and I wouldn't want.

I just think the Sigma is one great piece of glass.

Off topic - another Mighty Boosh fan

Cheers Gwyn, I didn't know that. As you suggest I'll prompt the shop before I go.

The allowance is pitiful, enough to make a guy dishonest, not that I ever would stray from the good and proper way of course.

There's quite a few good lenses from Canadian distributors on ebay and I've thought about it a few times - had a look through the GB customs site and calculated that with every single charge they and everybody else would levy it'd be around 30% extra and just wasn't worth it.

I know Chris does free postage to forum members and you might be able to get an even better price off him. (Though his prices are pretty keen to start off with)

I'm hoping to get to the States later on this year and was thinking of getting some gear over there but I'm also not sure if the warranty is good if bought abroad.

Ended up getting a job over by my local Calumet at the end of the day - real friendly bloke in there and I've bought quite a bit of gear of them.

Anyways I ended up playing with the D300 and this guy pulls out a couple of A3 prints on fine art paper - well I says they look fantastic - yep he says for ISO3200 its pretty good - couldn't believe it!!! - was sure it was just sales talk even though I thought this guy wouldn't BS me. Anyways we get over to the MAC and he pulls up the original pics with the exif - sure enough 3200!!! The whole bunch of pics that day was fantastic - it was down at London Zoo - a day out courtesy of Nikon - he said he was given the D3 but ended up using the D300 most of the day - saw the D3 files and they were great but the 300 stood up well - fantastically well. What got me was not only the superb low noise but it didn't seem to get fooled by difficult exposure levels - you know the sort of thing, shooting inside an aquarium with poor light and no flash. Ended up playing with the pics but even trying I couldn't fault them. OK he was playing with the finest glass Nikon could provide (one of them was a £££ 400 2.8 and the other an £800 17-55 2.8 ) but in the little I know about it all isn't the noise mostly to do with the sensor/electronics/firmware?
I used to have a Nikon EM a million years ago and sold it for a Pentax point and shoot and had Pentax ever since, but that 300 is an excellent bit of kit.

I'm hoping the 20 is gonna be good but if its just very nearly as good then I'm first in the queue.