Sue, thanks for posting these. All are beautiful and what fun to see your pics from the same day and almost the same time. You saw things to frame a bit different than I did and that was really fun to see. I think sometime we need to have all the Idyllers present at some function or other and have everyone take photogaphs so we can all see everyone's 'view'. I also loved the narrative. I still can't believe we did all that driving in just three days! I really love your shots of the shade and vegetable gardens. It was a bit too dark to photo down on the flats when I was outside so I never was able to get a photograph of what was my favorite garden too. I'm tickled you got the pics of the kitties. For some reason I never got around to snapping photos of the furbies. I had a good laugh again when I saw Minou in your bag. She kept climbing into our suitcases as well. OK I guess I've got to get outside and get things watered so I can get off to work. I do not know how the heck you keep up with all you do with a full time job. I can hardly get home and get dinner on the table let alone take care of the gardens and exercise. Teaching a class for eight hours wipes me out. Deanne

I began my interest in photography with a Pentax Spotmatic 35mm SLR back in 1968 and if someone were to offer me a dollar each for all the 1.5x, 2x & 3x tele convertors that I have thrown away over the years I could take my GF out to dinner tonight..LOL. Over the years I have stayed with Pentax for two reasons. First off, I have shot over 250,000 frames with my original Spotmatic and it still performs well. In addition, while Pentax has always stayed on the cutting edge of technology, often being the first to introduce new technologies they have managed to design their cameras in such a way that we can use any Pentax lens ever made on the brand new DSLR's. In fact, both Nikon and Canon build adapters that will allow you to use the old Pentax screw mount lenses on their new cameras. Generally telephoto lenses are used for taking pictures of distant scenes or objects outdoors, well beyond the maximum limits of a flash unit so we are obligated to shoot under the available light conditions. If we are taking a picture of a stationary object we can easily mount the camera & lens on a tripod and compensate for low light conditions by extending the shutter speed but, if you are taking nature shots of birds and animals shutter speed is critical because the subject is not going to remain motionless long enough to permit long shutter speeds. You may have also noticed that as we extend focal length we loose effective aperture. By example, your normal lens may be f1.2- f2, but if you extend to 200mm the maximum aperture will be in the order of f3.5 and at 300mm it will be f4.5 - f5.6. Every time we close the lens one f-stop we must cut shutter speed in half to get the same exposure. By Example, if you have an exposure of 1/125 @ f2 then stop the lens down to f3.5 you must drop the shutter speed to 1/60 to get the same exposure. Let us assume for the moment that you are shooting a scenic shot in late afternoon with your normal lens and you get an exposure of f2 @ 1/125. That would be a very easy hand held shot but what if you changed to a 300mm lens that has a maximum aperture of f4.5 ? You are losing two f-stops of light so you must now change the shutter speed 2 f-stops so the exposure would now be 1/30 @ f4.5 which is well below the 1/250 minimum for a hand held shot with a 300mm lens. Years ago the big 3 camera manufacturers (Nikon, Canon & Pentax) did not even offer a tele converter but due to pressure from 3rd party aftermarket sources they do now offer them, although they keep them very low key in their advertising for good reason. The main problem with tele converters, and what none of the third party manufacturers openly state is the "light insertion loss". Typically a tele converter will introduce a minimum of 2 f-stops of light loss and some go as high as 4 stops. Now it can be argued that with most DSLR's we can compensate for the light loss by increasing the ISO index. (every time we double the ISO we gain one f-stop), which is true, but keep in mind that for every increasing in ISO there is a loss in image resolution and a significant increase in grain (called noise on digitals). Tele converters also introduce both Chromatic & spherical aberrations which is a color & edge distortion that becomes very problematic when printing enlargements. While on the subject of aftermarket products there is another option needs to be mentioned, that being mirror lenses. While the big 3 camera manufactures do make some very good mirror lenses, there is a long list of aftermarket manufactures that build inexpensive 500mm & 1000mm mirror lenses. Be very careful here because most of the inexpensive mirror lenses have a fixed aperture which is typically f-8. While they will perform marginally well for shooting scenics from a tripod, due to the fact that most birds and animals are most active in early morning or late afternoon those lenses are almost useless for nature photography.

Those shots are taken with a Pentax ist DL (6.3mp) shooting in JPEG mode, however when my new Pentax K20d (14mp) arrives I will be using all my existing Pentax lenses on that one as well. The only downside to using the Pentax film camera lenses on the digitals is that it increases the effective focal length 1.5 times, thus a 300mm film camera lens on the digital yields a focal length equivalent to a 450mm on a film camera.

Not a bad deal, but they are definitely embellishing the quality of the free stuff. Some add on lenses and filter actually degrade the quality of the picture. The craftsmanship simply does not exist in those conversation lenses and filters. Is the Flash an actual Nikon flash? How does it work? Manual, auto, TTL? 4GB of memory DOES NOT cost $329 these days. Like I said, its looks like a decent price for what the market asking. Check here: cameta.com then go to there ebay store. Some good deals there to compare your against. 70-300MM G lens. you can buy them for about $140 and for what they are, it is a good lens. There are definitely better nikkor lenses, but they cost $900. You had better expect them to perform better. What type of photography do you plan to do with this lens? That will better tell if this lens is something you should have. Zjoe Here is a link that might be useful: Cameta D80 page