Wow, thanks so much to all my photog friends who have given feedback, both on my blog entry and at flickr. You've shared so many good thoughts, I'm gonna milk them for a series of posts, grouped by topic.
The first grouping is something that everybody wants more of in their camera bag: Lenses.
I mentioned that I would like both wider and longer lenses eventually, as well as specialized "fun stuff" such as a fisheye. Here's some of what I heard back from you:
From my pro shooter friend Mike Hudson (visit his blog or website):
A 2X lens converter sounds good, but most (even my $300 Canon 1.4X) will degrade image quality a little, so I usually don't recommend them. Depending on the wildlife you're shooting, you may be able to patiently just walk closer to your subject. When I shot some bears out East last week, I was able to get within twenty feet (ok- these were small bears!). Deer and elk are usually easy to shoot if you move slowly and use your 80-200 zoom. Open the aperture all the way to throw the background out of focus.
From flickr friend the_wolf_brigade, who shoots a lot of film but doesn't hate on digital guys:
Lens wise I'd see if you could borrow the Pentax 10-20mm version. Would be great for forests...uselss for wildlife though.
From flickr-ite robin746, who was also inspired to write a blog post on this topic:
You are missing a lens hood for the 50mm. Though personally I'd want a faster 50 than this, in order to justify taking it along.
All told, not as many comments on lenses as I might have expected. Nobody commented on my desire for a fisheye, possibly because they're somewhat rare (and expensive) and few folks have shot with them.
In any case, I visited Wings Camera, the local used gear shop, this week and couldn't resist the $15 price of a Tamron 2x teleconverter. Here it is by itself and mounted on the K100d Super along with my 80-200mm zoom...
At that price, of course, it's all-manual, but then my big zoom is an old manual one anyway, so they match fine. Looks like a more modern teleconverter that transmits auto-focus and -aperture info would run me around $75 on eBay, if I ever get a fancier zoom.
Here's a first attempt at shooting with it, in a grid comparing the range of my 80-200mm zoom both with and without the 2x converter. Not sure how obvious it is at flickr sizes, but in the full images, the 2x shots are much less sharp. No doubt a combination of focus, camera shake (these were hand-held shots) and some image degradation due to the 2x converter itself.
Hopefully I'll have some more interesting shots to share soon!
--sdc
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