Perhaps this thread should be "..to infinity and beyond...."

My experience of the 18-135 with K200D is that there are times when it won't focus. Both the 18-55 and the 55-300 on the K200 will hunt and then give up. The 18-135 gives up without hunting. Moving to a high contrast area or else manually de-focus the lens then "kick-starts" it.

Perhaps this lens prevents hunting by not even trying when it does not know what to do.

I am very impressed with the lens (but then I don't have any star or limited lenses....yet)

The News of the World scandal shows how lax people are with security...

Here in SA we often have banks phone up, asking us to prove identity by quoting Identity nos, phone nos etc. They get very shirty with me when I ask them to prove to me who they are. After all, they phoned me...

I shoot mostly P mode, although I manipulate the shutter speed depending on what I need. I don't seem to get having a camera that has complex metering and then ignore it to shoot manual. By all means for tricky light situations (then dial in EV comp), but the vast majority of lighting is normal and within the range of the camera. When using manual, do you use the camera to tell you if the exposure is OK? If so, why not use one of the automatic modes (P, Av, Tv...)

Sorry, just a rant.

ps - what about manual focus, and disable SR to get that authentic vintage OOF, blurred, badly exposed look..

(I am sure to be shot down in flames......)
Tim

I have it, would buy it again. While the price was exceptional (high). I bought from B&H in USA for 60% of the local cost. With that price, value for money was good. Not sure why UK and SA price soo high.

While not stellar in performance, its range and focus speed and WR make it a good package.

I would love to have all the other stellar (limited) lenses, but my budget is toooo small.

Tim

Mine is of my daughter... do you realise just how difficult it is to photograph someone on a trampoline.

I like the anonymous look.

No PP, straight from the camera..

My immediate wicked thought was that the owners of the cameras mentioned need to be spoonfed as they mostly set the camera on "auto". Pentax users are more advanced!!!

(please no angry Canikons - I jest!!!)

To respond to Smeggy - why switch SR off on a tripod?

The SR is optimised to the frequency of normal hand shaking - a quite low frequency. When rigidly mounted on a tripod, the natural frequency of movement is much higher (the hand normally damps out the high frequency). Control theory indicates that there must be one dominant time factor for stability. The movement due to the hand is slow, the sensor can react quicker than the hand shakes. When on the tripod, the vibration is much faster than hand shaking but smaller. This frequency, if close to the response of the sensor movement, could result in undamped movement which might be worse than having the SR switched off.

I hope this helps - not easy explaining it in simple terms...

Regards
Tim

To answer you: I generally use P mode, but check what it is set at. I change it depending on focal length, etc. Sometimes snap to action mode as it is the quickest was to switch to AF-C.

Never write down - use Photome or Lightroom to read the Exif to find out what I set.

Well I've taken the plunge. My lens should arrive on Friday. I listened to the advice about a wide prime (and I am very keen to get my hands on one), but realising my style of photography is "ad hoc" and when I have my 18-55 on I need more tele and with the 55-300 I need more wide, I have settled for the 18-135. I discovered that I can order from B&H for a ridiculous price which works out to be about half of the cheapest price in SA (yes, I have added in duty and tax)($515)

While the clinical reviews of the 18-135 are not great, all who have one are happy with it. I do not expect to have razor sharp focus but the flexibility of the wide to tele is what I am looking for.

The wide prime will come before the grandchildren...

Thanks for you comments and advice.
Tim