Numbers 2 and 3 for me. The last time I tried to photograph owls I had to make sure the eyes were selected by the AF, anywhere else on the bird and the plumage foxed the AF everytime.

Or the cute San Disk ones you get with extreme 3 cards which hold 2 SD or CF cards an fit on your keyring.

Proves my point, with a fisheye you would have the walls to either side in shot and the floor and ceiling to, and probably your feet! You do get the distortion though.

mikew's point about lens speed is valid though.

About every month or so I clear out my camera bag and give it good 'hoover' to get rid of any dust and grit.

When my lenses need cleaning I first I use Rocket blower to get rid of any grit, then, if necessary, a brush with a sable 'mop' watercolour brush, very expensive to buy today, were cheap when I got mine.
And only if really required do I resort to 'Pec Pads' and Eclipse fluid. I never use microfiber cloths to clean lenses, it does a great job of removing 'gunk' but it stays on the cloth ready to contaminate another lens, with Pec Pads you get a new clean one every time.

I've still got my original Takumar lenses treated this way and well used, still optically perfect after over 40 years of this treatment.

I would never put a lens into my bag without the lens cap on, and then I swap the cap over from the bayonet end.

Dust can get between the filter and the lens as a friend of mine found out when he almost sold his 200mm f2.8 because it mysteriously started front focusing for no apparent reason, took the UV filter off the front, cleaned the lens - no more front focusing. Must have been trapped moisture and dust that had built up over a year or so.

Using a UV filter as 'protection' is really not worth it for two reasons, the first is putting a filter on the front of a lens can never improve image quality, but the main reason is that they don't work as protection. A light blow that the lens probably would survive will shatter the thin glass of the filter which then goes on to scratch the lens coating rendering it useless. A lens hood offers much better protection.

A polarizing filter is good, as are graduated ND to help with the 'white sky' effect you get due to the limited tonal range of digital sensors. (you can either get a nice sky with a dark foreground or a correctly exposed foreground with a blown out sky) a graduated ND filter can help to even up the exposure between the two extremes.

Solid ND filters to hold back the light for those slow shutter speed shots of water are always useful.

There are two types of extreme wide angle rectilinear and fisheye. The fisheye gives you the extreme wide angle at the cost of distortion, the rectilinear gives little distortion but sacrifices the wide angle. Both will have the same massive DOF.

A 10mm fisheye will give a 180° field of view (35mm format) a rectilinear only about 120°, not much more than the 16mm end of the 16 - 45 f4. Add to that the crop factor and a 10mm rectilinear is very close to the standard lens in terms of angle of view.

The Pentax 10 - 20mm fisheye is an amazing lens, you either love 'em or hate 'em, but the way Pentax has handled internal reflections is superb (there isn't any)its difficult not to get the Sun in a picture with such a wide field of view and Pentax has handled it beautifully, build qualities is the best too.

Don't forget the £25.00 cash back on this lens till January.

One of my favorite lenses is the Sigma 70 - 200mm f2.8 EX, you see these on eBay for around the £300.00 - £350.00 (just over half price) mark. Probably one of the best affordable sports lenses there is. Rear focusing so it focuses in the blink on an eye and the large aperture means it focuses in low light. The current version will focus down to 1 meter which makes it a semi half life size macro (1:2) the older versions which are the ones usually on eBay only focus down to 1.5 Meters, but some of the Sigma sites reckon they have sacrificed a little image quality to get the closer focusing. (lens design is all about compromises)

It makes a superb portrait lenses with the large aperture and long focal length getting the background out of focus is easy, and you can set the DOF by zooming on the fly (the more you zoom the less DOF you get).

The EX build quality is very good - highly recommended.

Its a great resource and some stunning images Matt.

Hi Dan

I don't use Elements and I got it wrong. You Open an Adjustment Layer, don't alter anything just click OK, drag the Adjustment Layer BELOW the image Layer and then link using the Alt + Left Click with the curser on the join between the Layers. Now it will work as a Layer Mask. Sorry about that Dan.

Sometimes its easier to fill the Layer Mask with Black which hides that Layer and paint with White to reveal it.