Thanks to all of you for the kind welcomes and critiques! I wish I could take the time to write out a direct reply to each one of you, but I'm about to have to head in to work for the day, and will be working at both jobs for the next couple of days. So, I'll be working from 8:00 AM 'til around midnight until the weekend comes. (Gotta make that dollar to invest in lenses, you know.)
Suffice it to say I appreciate all the responses and will keep them in mind in the future. I do plan on picking up a good macro lens at some point. The Takumar I used is the f/2.5, and it's the Taiwan-made version (it's my first lens purchase outside the two kit lenses). I didn't know a lot about it until AFTER I'd made the purchase. Some of the over-processed look is likely due to my trying to compensate for the lens's softness with the camera's custom image settings. I'm vacillating on what to get next -- a longer zoom for birding, or a good, fast prime. A lot will hinge on budget constraints. I do enjoy taking bird shots more than anything else -- at least at this point. I started out trying to catch them in-flight simply because that seemed like the most challenging shot to capture. And I figured if I can get that down, I'll learn a lot about manual focusing in the process. Again, thanks so much for the warm welcome. I look forward to participating in the discussion, and expect I'll enjoy getting to know all of you fellow Pentaxians. Sincerely, Walt Gilbert -- http://www.facebook.com/walt.gilbert http://www.flickr.com/photos/walt_gilbert/ http://wally-gee.deviantart.com/ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
