Thanks all for your kind comments, it is a very small garden next to countryside , no insecticide nor weed killer so plenty of interest from insects and other occasional visitors which I am documenting as an informal long term project.

An idle afternoon in the garden with the K1 + 100mm macro, all hand held manual focus:

Similar happened to me in a hide with a K50 + Sigma 150-500, resting on the shelf when some prat lifted the flap and knocked them to the floor! Not a mark luckily, just shows how robust they are. Good luck with fixing the strut.

Today was an epiphany of sorts. Being self employed I had planned to gradually wind down to a semi-retirement in the not too distant future but events seem to have decided for me. Until Christmas I was flat out as usual but afterwards was like the tap suddenly turned off. Still a dribble of work but then a request from a former client landed in my inbox; I read it and out of the blue I thought I just cannot do this any more so I politely declined. I expected to feel relief but instead felt very flat, as if my purpose in life had ended.

Still, it was a nice sunny day so took myself off to Stratford and spent as long as I wanted just taking photos; nothing groundbreaking, an experiment back inside the church using pixel shift and then a few along the river. A cappuccino on the Theatre cafe terrace, bought some hot cross buns and home for tea. But what a difference it made to my mood, those few hours of relaxed concentration without any pressure raised my spirits no end. No doubt I will still accept some work but it feels like a corner had been turned and the balance of priorities has shifted.

Is that house behind seriously wonky?

Is there significance that it is all marked as discontinued?

We get sparrows, you get these! Did it land in a paint store? An extraordinary creature beautifully captured.

You are in a unique situation with access to these places and these really do them justice. If you are ever in the theatre down the road from me please let me know, it’s the RSC at Stratford upon Avon.

I was also interested to see the Sirui waterproof tripod and whilst it looked good technically and could easily be dismantled for cleaning it didn’t feel stable enough and not in the same class as my trusty Manfrotto. Gitzo introduced a tiny table top “travel” tripod for heavier cameras but legs not extendable so could unbalance easily, also v. expensive. That is the real benefit of this show, being able to handle and assess kit you may be interested in, and buy at a special price if it works out.

I didn’t bother much with cameras other than the couple I mentioned earlier but it was clear they were in a race to churn out new mirrorless bodies and lens ranges to suit, and the third party lens companies were doing the same. I wonder whether Ricoh decided they had little innovation to show in the Pentax range so would suffer in comparison, although the new GRIII could have been of interest. The massive push to mirrorless appears to be driven by giant electronics companies like Sony and Panasonic who have never been in the traditional SLR market; Fuji and Olympus with their compact body history embraced it early but are challenged by the drive to larger sensor formats. When it comes to larger formats the bodies feel unbalanced by the heavy lenses, the sizes of which are determined by the larger mounts. Handling them you take most of the weight in you left hand as holding the body in your right isn’t enough to keep it level. Ergo manual focus is less easy to manage but these systems aren’t designed for that, concentrating entirely on autofocus developments.

Sorry to rant on, I tried to find a mirrorless system I could like but they are a bit like when you get a new phone or laptop which has loads of features designed for a narrow and distinct demographic, you have to clear away all the crap to get something that works for you. If ever Pentax go mirrorless l hope they will call on their photographic heritage to bring out something different from the rest of the herd.

At The Photography Show bought this dinky Sirui 4 way head, it folds down really small into a case and will take 10kg.
https://youtu.be/oFFYrXBTD28
And look what camera it’s demonstrated with!