Thanks Stefan, the whole business of lens testing is far too complex for people like us who just want to see if a 300mm A* is sharper than a 300 FA*, that's why I only photograph a £10 note and take at least 4 shots at each aperture and pick out the best, (because of focusing difficulties). I might start using Live View for focusing. See this site for why?

A brick wall is ideal if you have one that you can set up square to and at the right distance and it's not raining, and the light doesn't vary throughout the test I sometimes use a Burgular alarm box about 30m away.

Flossie I wouldn't bother with the AP chart. It's partly copied off the Patterson chart which had 4 colour blocks R G B and Black all on a white background. On digital you can't read off the resolution f/2.8 and f/8 look the same? On film you have to use a microscope to read it it's so small. The colours do show that digital is poor on red but improves as you stop down. Excellent on green and blue, which is probably why night shots taken at the Bluhour look very sharp.

It's the way all the mags test lenses Ken also all the sites on the internet. Please stop complicating matters. The BBC like to waste Licence payers money. Period

I've worked in industries where we have had to put in large concrete bases and 50m long concrete vertical piles and raker piles to stop very tiny movements. A tripod for what we are talking about just needs to stop a certain amount of movement/vibration. There is a thread on the other forum about that and it mentions (amonst other things) how to bring any tripod up to "Class A" spec. by attaching a fairly heavy block of iron.

The thread I'm referring to covers testing of the SR on the K-7 and has found flaws which have been relayed back to Pentax Japan. They have used a Class A tripod in the testing. So lets leave it at that. We are doing very very simple tests at a maximum of 87.5 lpmm, hardly rocket science

Thanks Stefan, I'll read through that tomorrow, but that's not as high as the resolution I'm talking about. Zeiss have managed 400lpmm on film (which is really tiny 0.0025mm). This site gives the maximum digital resolution as 87.5lpmm which means the testing setup doesn't need to be anything more than a decent tripod. Normal film testing used to yield 120-140lpmm again with just a decent tripod.

Send it back Gareth

Looks excellent John, in much better condition than mine is. This lens is built to take the rough stuff and my version is proof of that

I posted a link on the "Lens Test Charts" thread to a test on this lens although it was only done with a Pentax *ist DL it gives some indication to how good it is. Link

Also some shots in this thread taken using the Pentax 1.7x AF Adapter.

These wouldn't have been for consumer grade cameras and lenses for which testing in the normal working environment is perfectly satisfactory/desired. Digital has poor resolution anyway so a decent tripod is more than adequate. Flash could be used to minimize any shake. Correct/precise focus is the most important part of any lens test.

This is a perfectly adequate test for our purposes.

Does it also install a nasty rootkit on your computer

Not sure how much use it is, but there's one free
from AP. Link in this thread.

So it is, you did mention it earlier. They are usually
white which is why it didn't click

Instead of sending him a £10 Note why not just take a
picture of the £10 Note as your lens test

Then buy you and me a drink with the £10 Note

Then apart from him were all better off