Bird at feeder sequence

5r82 wrote:

I think you need more reach. 200mm would be better in this situation. Since you already have Pentacon 135mm why not get Pentacon 200mm? I bought m42 Pentacon 200mm auto MC f4 couple of days ago in great condition for 25 euros only and it seems to be a great lens for its price. The only thing I had to do with this lens is to drill a hole in its mount so that the locking pin from the camera would get there and lock it in position, as you probably know that m42 adapter naturally has some play inside the K-mount. Now use it on K-1. Or you could've bought Pentax HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm f/4-5.8 ED WR which was on sale a week ago on BH for 149$. Now it is again 396$. But, prime lens at 200mm like Pentacon is sharper than new Pentax consumer zoom and costs less. I have this Pentax lens.

Thanks. Agreed about the longer FL, but hadn't thought of looking for another Pentacon. May give that a go. I did look at the Pentax HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm f/4-5.8 ED at BH, but getting it here to France would have added close to another $100 so decided against it. What put me off a bit though is the IQ at ISO800 - a longer lens would help, but if I cant bump the ISO up then I'm not sure I'd be much happier with the results, and with the narrower aperture at the long end the Pentax-DA 55-300mm f/4-5.8 ED and PLM don't seem so attractive.  OK when the light is good and so on, and I suppose getting closer and then reducing the size would make the images more acceptable.

Tricky, really, but as it's only an occasional interest I may stick with the bridge camera and make do with static shots - a bit mundane when it seems everybody else is doing BIF with apparent ease, but fine for identification purposes.