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I second this, although I cannot tell the difference between some variants DG / APO / DG APO / APO Macro Super. Some have no band, some red, others gold. The DL ones typically have a more constrained aperture, but even that might be worth double checking on a case-by-case basis. One feature I avoid with Sigma zoom lenses is the "lock switch", or if I had that switch then I would never enable it, and that is because eBay often shows these lenses offered faulty! What apparently happens is the lock feature risks outside movement putting pressure on plastic rings, which results in tiny metal screws shifting by fractions of a mm, and those misplaced screws can permanently jam the zoom.

I have never been tempted by a Nikon, but I agree with the principles in the post. You could consider, however, that MBAs from Wharton (or any other leading business school) will join a business with the aim of carving out their own corporate control. This means deploying an army of MBAs will tear any business apart, and this is precisely what happened to Nokia. They know what is good for the business, but they also know what is best for themselves.

... my recollection of the sign-up process is that photos cannot be public until the account is approved. Has anyone recently managed to have their account approved?

I have made 5 public, and when I refresh the site automatically makes them private again.

Do vintage 35mm SLR Nikon lenses work with the D50? I'd look at the old film SRL cameras that have the same lens mount because they often come bundled with a 18-55mm zoom autofocus, and it might be possible to get the whole kit for £10 - maybe convert the body into a clock? Assuming a vintage lens is still clear it would cover portraits and street shots. For wildlife you can get a fairly new Sigma or Tamron 300mm with build-in macro focusing for reasonable price too, but I started out with an even cheaper vintage trombone type manual lens. I think the best advice is to discover yours shots first and only then buy the required lens. You might end up remortgaging your house to pay specialised wide apertures etc. :(

Yes, I tried it out yesterday - 300mm single handed shot of a tiny bird in a hedge. The feathers are crisp and I can even see the transparent distortion in the lens around the animal's eye - I did not even know the eyes stuck out like that! Point is there is no way that the OPS is failing and this irks me because when I first questioned why all shots all looked alike in the camera's built-in monitor, I took the GX10 to a top-end camera specialist, and his assessment was that the OPS is broken and needs replacing! For all these years I did not challenge his assertion :( Thank you.

Can you please clarify, does the FluCard drain even when the camera is turned off?

I uploaded >5 photos but set them to private. The instructions did not say they need to be marked public. Does this mean my account cannot be approved?

Sounds similar to the generic ones. Apparently Transcend made a SDHC Wi-Fi card, and there are unbranded Chinese ones with negative reviews on the software - such as not maintaining connection, having few functions, and so on. My guess is that packing a whole Wi-Fi router into an SD card requires a low-powered weak aerial?! Transcend Wi-Fi SD Card review | TechRadar

Fellow Pentaxians, I am making an assumption that the K3's FluCard includes a remote shutter feature. Thinking of my older DSLR the lowest costs I have seen for shutter and Wi-Fi adapter is £4 + £17 respectively (probably similar numbers in USD or EUR). What is the advantage of a Pentax FluCard over a generic remote shutter and SDHC Wi-Fi adapter? Thanks!

GX10 firmware 1.0 does not seem to have options. OPS is greyed out in the menus with value set to "Auto".

All these years I have been shooting with OPS "off" because I thought the feature was broken on my camera. I do not see any change in the viewfinder. Maybe there is a difference in how its implemented between camera brands? I read online that IBIS does not work above 300mm, so I have tested at 200mm. The images on the camera screen raises no noticeable difference, and there is sometimes a difference when viewed on a laptop !!! :eek: I should have joined this forum a long time ago :confused: Does OPS continue to work when mounted on a tripod?

So many cameras have this. I have had my Samsung GX10 (Pentax K10D) for about 12 years, and throughout this time the OPS always bothered me because it does not seem to do anything. When the switch points to "Off" nothing happens, so maybe that setting works. When the switch points to "On" the green shake-hand can sometimes illuminate in the viewfinder, so something works. However, whether OPS is on or off, I cannot feel a difference in my hand and all the photos I have ever tried to test this with look the same. Is there a test to verify OPS actually works?

When all else fails mobile phones are invariably the backup. Does anyone operate cameras without one? Your next mobile phone shot might also be shot of your life.. - Mobile Photography Awards

You might disagree but my view is that Minolta were not amateurs, and that Minolta did not accidentally use too much glass ;) I was asking why Minolta used a big diameter lens when a smaller one would have delivered the same technical specification, and I hypothesised that bigger diameter provides superior optics. William highlighted that Canon use a larger lens for superior optics, but associates the diameter with aperture size. I am not saying William is wrong, but I seek more convincing that aperture is the full/only explanation.

I agree there is a correlation between lens diameter and maximum aperture, but I do not arrive at the same conclusion because (without being an expert in camera technology) I do not know that these physical features cannot be mutually exclusive. Perhaps people who can afford to pay for the best will overlook something that has one feature without the other. The F1.8 lens is designed to be lightweight. The only thing I see confirmed is that Canon needs to compromise performance to achieve that weight reduction, and the bulk of the weight saved it by reducing the amount of glass. The F1.0 lens is designed for optical superiority. The marketing material makes a big deal over the large diameter lenses providing higher contrast and less flare. The flare actually washes out colour so these optical characteristics may have a common root cause. Flare is caused by non-image light bouncing between layers of glass and then hitting the sensor; so if the stray light bounces between the layers of glass and misses the sensor then no haze occurs. This leads me to ask, if the glass diameter is oversized then does more of the stray light avoid hitting the sensor? Btw, I never even knew F1.0 lenses existed.. :(

Thank you for providing a philosophical perspective on what is often a purely technical topic :)

I started out scraping together the everyone else's cast offs. The first camera I bought for myself was not even a SLR. It was however a Minolta that gave good clear shots, and it had an original Minolta auxiliary lens. The Minolta attachment had a much wider diameter than its adapter ring - perhaps that was simply to avoid vignetting. What happened next is that I started attaching all sorts of random adapter rings and vintage lenses. I even screwed onto to small digital camera a ridiculous looking 500mm mirror lens, and the camera happily snapped away. What I observe, even if it was by coincidence only, is that artefacts in captured light occurred at the far edges of my lenses - far less so in the middle. I suspected all deformations would be exaggerated on auxiliary lenses because there were extra layers of glass. I also hypothesised the centre of the curvature was easiest part of any lens for a manufacturer to grind accurately, possibly because the mechanical limits of the manufacturing process would naturally increase errors at the physically extreme boundary of their manufacturing processes. This led me to assume, rightly or wrongly, that manufacturers were intentionally selling auxiliary lenses with larger diameters in order to keep the penetrating light as proportionally close to the centre as was economically feasible. Roll forward some years and I bought a proper DSLR. Even then most of new lenses were beyond my budget, and I observed enviously that the more sought after new lenses featured glass with larger diameters than their cheaper counterparts. These days I have no such budget constraints, but in my untrained hands the top-end kit would be a waste of manufacturer effort - I am content to muddle through with oddball glass that would in theory - if used by a proper photographer - produce a desired image. Hence my question, but if its all bad information then it does not matter :)

What is the "well-known website" please?

The words "other shot" mask a link selected only because it shows a bright eye, and that was probably also enhanced in some way.

This strikes me as obvious and uncertain. Every camera manufacturer that provides an auxiliary lens packages them with increased diameter over the lens they are being attached to, but it is unclear how much increase is optically optimal. When using add-on/auxiliary lenses (fish-eye/macro/etc.), do you widen the diameter and if so - by how much?

This is fantastic and much better than any wildlife shot I have taken. One critique though is that the eye (the consciousness of the subject) is not as bright as some other parts of the composition. This other shot is not as skilful as yours, but it does have a bright eye. Would it be unethical edit a little and "unsharp mask" the eye?