The case protects the lens and is essential with this lens IMHO

"The plastic mount appears to be a non-issue as it is very durable."Ha! Ha! That made me laugh!!! I don't think the seller of this lens on ebay would agree with you! It's a DAL that he's listed wrong link

You'll get told off by HG now Stan

Why can't they put the EV value on the LCD panel?

A Pentax Spotmeter gives it directly as it's reading to 0.3 EV

I'm not sure if it's displayed on the camera if you set it to spot?

Edit: My Gossen Sixtomat Digital gives them as well
currently about EV 5 in the living room... not very bright.

If you get a rail similar to the one in the link I posted previously http://www.slrgear.com/articles/focus/focus.htm allowing back and forth movement of about 300mm each way and take several shots say 20mm apart.... one of them should be in focus.... if you set the focus at mid-rail first.... Ha! Ha!

Note: slrgear also have perfect lighting with about four 400w daylight units costing hundreds of pounds similar to this:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/TESTS/HMI.HTM

Also note they have a small focusing rail on the rig for left/right movement. Unfortunately the focus errors are normally so large that something bigger than a small focusing rail was needed by them in the front/back direction.

I've tried with a Novoflex focusing rail which allows +/- 30mm movement and no matter what method of focusing I used. It still indicated in focus for the length of the rail. I wanted to get the two points where it goes in and out of focus so that I could take a point halfway between the two. I might try again with one focusing rail on top of another.

Even if you get it in focus, you still have curvature of field throwing it out at the edges and focus shift changing the point of focus as the lens is stopped down.

If you focus just by looking at the screen (and I've always done that with 6x6 cameras) you can only say it's acceptably in focus within the DOF because that's the definition of the DOF theory.

The best way is to practice focusing on small boxes until you can read the lettering clearly.

I reckon about 1 shot in 4 will be almost exact. I'm not sure if I was just lucky with this test MF with a 50mm f/1.4 exact to the mm, notice the change in colour around the 0 point




Falk Lumo has done extensive tests about the low light focus problem and printed a graph which shows points in daylight and bright indoor lighting as well, he's not explained what all the colours mean, but very few points fall on top of others link

My solution with a 24-35mm lens is use f/8 and infinity.

I'm surprised that after all previous discussions about MF nobody seems to understand anything about it

Most modern screens and all Pentax screens are made for slow lenses and regardless of what lens you put on the camera, you only see the equivalent of f/2.4. Only Canon make a screen for use with fast lenses of f/1.2 etc.

Loads of info on the other forum, Ken Rockwell etc. and on this one if you search.
23 pages here for starters link

There's also rumour of a D900 and a Pentax FF......
Watch and be Amazed!

No one has suggested that Nikon drop FF cameras such as the
D700, although it is 3.5 years old and a replacement doesn't
seem to be a priority

Excellent program about George Eastman on PBS (SKY Ch 166) last
night. I think it's repeated today at 12:30pm

Clip on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v0cUEBZSC4

Edit: The whole program seems to be on Youtube

George Eastman: The Wizard of Photography - Part 1 of 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfhsM15nElM

The DA also has a hood and usually a soft case.

Seems that NB's time is spent just on Q matters these days

http://nedbunnell.posterous.com/