I've just had a very pleasant phone call this morning from Archant publishers regarding my entry into the British National Countryside photography competition to notify me that one of my entries has been chosen as one of the 10 regional winning entries and part of the prize is a private party at St James's Palace with Prince Charles where they select the overall winning entry, should be an interesting day out!!

http://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/article/the-national-countryside-photography-c...

The photo is one of my Snowdon sunrise reflection shots but until the photo has been published on their website I'm being a little cautious at providing a link!!

Simon

FA 35mm F2 arrived today - great condition and well packaged

Thanks Will

Just thought I'd add that having taken just a few shots around the house I'm already impressed by the IQ of this lens


Simon

Giving this one a miss as my K5 is working great at the moment and I won't be buying GPS in the near future.

Simon

Fair enough, maybe I'm just used to seeing the scallys who wander around most of the time The main problem with Chester I find is the drunken plonkers fighting in the street after the pubs shut, I usually make my exit a little earlier.

Chester zoo is a good place to visit, only 10 minutes from the centre, the only problem there is that it's a full day out on its own so you wouldn't see much else.



.

I live and work just outside of Chester (work frequently on the Airbus site) and often visit the races...never heard of anyone having problems such as this - must have been an unlucky incident I think.

As for photography perhaps suprisingly I hardly ever go to Chester with the camera, I'm more drawn to the surrounding scenery. Having said that the city centre has some great architecture, a walk around the walls and beside the canal is definitely worthwhile as is a walk in the roman gardens and park. The riverside would be my personal favourite due to the lack of crowds (unless it's a red hot day).

The most important tip I can give though is call into the Brewery Tap real ale pub on lower bridge street :!weblink below)

http://www.the-tap.co.uk/

Simon

My memory must be going Mike, don't remember reading it before, I was thinking of the Pentaxforums review, obviously I must have

The problem for me is that I can't help pixel-peeping and I know the edges would bother me, in real-world use though I'm sure the issues mentioned in the reviews are not as significant as they suggest. I do feel Pentax priced this wrongly though which raised initial expectations higher than they perhaps should have been.

Simon

Thanks, not read that before...it's definitely made my mind up to stick with the DA17-70, to quote Klauss:

"you don't really want use this lens for architecture or landscape photography".

Only 1.5 stars for optical quality, obviously test charts don't fully represent "real world" use but the pricing suggests to me it should be better than it seems to be.

Simon

I've been using it for ages now (free version) and to be honest I'd be happy to pay - I think the Iphone app is pretty cheap as it's such a useful piece of software - shame I don't have an iphone to use it on though!! I'm suprised that there's a free version at all - I certainly wouldn't have given it away for nothing as I'm sure it took a bit of developing

simon

Slightly off-topic but I recently tried the Tamron 18-250 "all in one" but just wasn't happy with the IQ compared to my DA17-70 which I'm pretty impressed with.

I've read the not so positive 18-135 review and it's put me off it really, mainly due to the mentioned weak borders. Bearing in mind though that I usually shoot around F11 I'd be interested to hear comparisons of the 18-135 vs the 17-70 (Gwyn please:wink - certainly the sharpness difference between a prime and decent zoom is much less significant at these apertures.

Simon

I've just bought the Lowepro Compuday photo 250 and I'm really pleased with it as a small, lightweight and discrete daysack. It' doesn't have the traditional dividers of most rucksacs etc but I find it's more flexible as a result...

http://www.lowepro.com/compudayphoto

Simon