" I've A Good Mind To Go Down There To Stirling Street And Give Them A Piece Of My Wallet! "

" And get the Pentax lens in the cabinet - the 300mm f:4 EDIF SDM lens. The one with the gold and green trim rings around it. I finally have a use for it..." The use is going to be bird pictures. because - you guessed it - the person who was having these very sensible thoughts had seen the posters advertising the BirdLife Photography Conference on the 21st and 22nd of September down in Fremantle and wanted to get some bird photography in before that weekend. All the better to find out what it is all about and then have some sensible questions to ask the 12 or so professional and enthusiast bird and animal photographers there who'll be presenting it. And here is your link: https://www.birdlifephotoconference.org Good idea, good choice, good planning. Good bargain, too...as many of the Pentax lenses can be. We don't often feature a report on them here because I don't own a Pentax and no-one has lent me one yet...but the optics that they hold are absolutely top-notch. The cameras are no slouches either, even if they do not get trumpeted as much as other brands. No enthusiast and few professionals, who start with a Pentax digital camera need step outside their mount or their lenses to do all they want. So, to the lens. 300mm into an APS-C sensor yields 450mm in old 35 films speak. Well enough for birding and for quite large images too if you are at all a competent stalker. This may not be a skill that is approved in social media circles, but if you are going to be dealing with any sort of wildlife photography, learn all you can about the art. It is a skill that has a great deal of science in it too, and you will be a lot kinder to the animals and birds you are photographing if you can do it well. The closer you get, the better the shot is pretty much how it goes, and the really good photo hunter gets in unnoticed and gets away in the same manner. Or, to put it bluntly, don't frighten the animals. This lens will go as close as 1.4 metres and if you can do that with the nest of the Blackburn Skua you'll be doing well. The lens has the advantage over zoom in the resolution and sharpness that can be designed into it and in the smaller size that it presents. A maximum aperture of f:4 is good for a lot of daylight shots and with modern Pentax digitals is all you need as far as light-gathering. Revel in the fact that you'll only be holding 1070 g above your head as you wade through the reeds. It's got a tripod collar and foot to help as well. It also has a low-noise supersonic focusing motor for discrete AF, though the manual switch is a good idea close to those Skuas. In fact, if you have a Pentax camera and want to be the best birder in your camera club, you need this lens and there is no ex-skuas not to get one...