Photography day, so I did some research and decided to go to All Saints’ Church, Icklingham. In the morning I spent another hour and a half chatting to a former colleague, then waited for the post. The lens was due to arrive today. It arrived after the post, around 2:30pm, and it was not the lens advertised. Why is it so difficult to sell what you describe?
The lens was a cheaper and older one than the one advertised, and I think the seller had got confused with model numbers. I looked at the reviews and discovered it’s actually a better lens than the one advertised, but worth much less than the £160 I paid. I tried it out in the garden and around the house. It’s sharp, with beautiful colours, but it’s very susceptible to fogging. If there’s a large, bright light source in an otherwise dark scene then there’s less contrast. It’s easy to rescue this in post-processing, though.
I wrote to the seller and said I’d like to either send the lens back or pay a fair price for this model. Incidentally, he sent the wrong lens hood for the camera as well. It’s not a wide angle lens hood, and it doesn’t even fit the front of the lens.
I never made it to the church and guests came in the evening. When they’d gone I hunted everywhere for the adaptor screws that allow me to mount my TLR camera on my tripod, so I can use that in churches. I couldn’t find them anywhere – very exasperating!