Just to let all pentaxians in and around the North Devon region know that the walking festival is being advertised again for 2010. As in the past some decent pro photographers will be offering tuition for small groups 8-12 people. I've been twice now and found this a good way to learn more and meet other photography enthusiasts. Its good VFM

http://www.exmoorwalkingfestival.co.uk/

Hartland Coastal photography 2 May £17 Ross Hoddinott
Essence of Exmoor Landscape 4 May £17 Peter Hendrie

thanks for the advice

Can anyone help with some advice? I'm trying to increase my macro lens to larger than 1:1 ratio

I've got a sigma 70mm macro lens and I was hoping to get some fully automatic extension tubes with the full contacts to allow aperture control (???) and AF (AF being less of an issue with macro work)

My sigma lens is a digital lens so I cannot control the aperture manually

I bought the following on ebay for £12 in order to mess around (fine on my manual 50m lens) 12mm, 20mm and 36mm TUBES APK TRIPLUS BRAND...or am I missing a trick?

Does anyone know where I might be able to get the Kenko extension tube set as I've not been able to find them anywhere? or can anyone suggest an alternative brand that will allow me to operate the sigma macro lens gaining control over aperture? to achieve larger than the 1:1 the macro lens will already produce?

does anyone know if a teleconverter would be an alternative?

any help or advice would be appreciated....

Oh and happy new year to all pentax users! best wishes for 2010

A star in a future health & safety powerpoint presentation somewhere.......

Thanks Guys

I think I'll look at the sigma 120-400 in the new year in hope that santa deposits me with some bank of england gift vouchers!

I'm thinking of replacing my Tamron 70-300 with a Sigma 120-400, does anyone have this lens? is it good? how sharp through the full range of the lens are the images? etc etc your views are appreciated.

I'm not considering the Bigma as I have filters that would fit the 120-400 and I wanted something little smaller and more portable.

Has anyone used the 120-400 with the Sigma teleconverters, and if so what was the impact on image quality?

I went out in a hurry yesterday wearing my glasses, forgetting to put my contact lenses in ....to avoid having to peer akwardly through my narrow rimmed glasses and then into the view finder for those low shots......

Good news.....I do however, keep a spare set of contact lenses in the car........ bad news........which my wife has driven to manchester......

doh!!!

Thanks once again for the advice.

I switched from Cokin P series to Lee filters 105mm on a 77mm wide angle ring to avoid vignetting on my sigma 10-20 (at 10mm) with no more than 2 filters fitted at once (using a K10D).....works for me, it was however an expensive switch but worth it.

Cropping is the alternative or not shoting at 10mm..... which kind of defeats the object.....

either way make sure you view a couple test shots as you won't always pick up the vignetting via the viewfinder alone.....

Wonderful autumnal colours in the shot no.1