Lens arrived today: fast delivery, well packed and in perfect nick. Many thanks Philip - it's been a pleasure dealing with you.

Now if only the rain would stop long enough for me to try it out...!

Smugmug have recently done a deal with Loxley Colour to print for UK customers. According to the rhetoric it chould be seamless to the customer but I don't know anyone who's tried it first-hand.

Ooops - sorry. I thought I'd checked that nobody else had mentioned it but clearly need to look more thoroughly next time.

...but this time the management back up the security guard.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/16/02-olympic-venues-row-security-photography?newsfeed=true

As an alternative solution, have you tried letting the focus track your baby using the AF.C setting? Much cheaper than a new lens if it works...

I can't remember the version numbers but the version of Camera Raw that came with Photoshop CS4 (which I think was the same engine as LR3) wouldn't read the PEF files off my K-5, but you have the option of having the camera store your RAW fiies as either PEF or DNG and it read DNG just fine. So I'd suggest taking a few photos as DNGs and trying to import those.

Good luck!
Paul

Any warranty left to run on it?

Another vote for the 50-135 - it just seems to deliver the goods every time. That said, my exposure has been limited having not tried any of the the FA* lenses or the Da*200/300.

I used it to replace the kit lens on my K100D (not a carefully thought through decision but a naive choice from a newbie that didn't know better so don't ask me to justify it!) and didn't feel the need for another lens for a couple of years. That said, I've heard that there were consistency issues with the manufacturing so perhaps I just fell on my feet (beginner's luck!) and got a good copy.

Saying that, it's a long time since I last reached for it and on my recent holiday I took the DA 17-70 in preference. It's just that little bit more vibrant and I reckoned it was worth giving up the extra reach for that.

Here's a couple of links (one two) to photos on my Flickr stream taken with it — two links due to inconsistent tagging.

Is that really true? Even with current sensor resolutions, diffraction from the aperture ring is starting to limit the sharpness. A back-of-envelope calculation with these formulae suggests that a 16MP APS-C sensor (to pick one at random ) will start showing effects around f/5.6.

Of course, larger sensors might drive up the value of that 50mm f/1.2 even more...

Cheers,
Paul