It wasn't on these tests, although it was the 50mm f/1.7 A Lens used not a DA. link

I'm surprised that you've got a blue cast using AWB with the 55-300mm that lens is quite good for getting the colours right. You will get a blue/purple from some old lenses such as Ricoh using AWB. Using the Daylight setting often corrects it, but it's not as accurate as AWB.

I wouldn't think 'Bright' mode would effect the WB.

I sometimes take a photo of a grey remote control off a TV or Radio to set the WB. The one I use is the one for the Pure Evoke 3..... See DAB Radio is useful to have after all

Colour casts also show up quite well on galvanized steel such as bright scaffold tubing.

All the shots are quite good, but they need to be max. 800 wide for this forum. The forum software's reducing them again and losing detail.

There seems to be a purple/blue cast on them all? It's more noticeable on the last shots. The lead and stonework to the left of the bird should be grey. Try the colour picker in photoshop it will show you the RGB make up of the colour. Reduce the blue content until the stone reads something like 50R 50G 50B

The 55-300mm should be OK set to AWB (preferable) or Daylight WB and shouldn't have a purple cast.

Don't forget the Firewire 800 in case you change to a CF camera

Impressive hard drive, but it looks like SCSCI all over again where they just priced everything out of the market. I've still got load of SCSI gear that cost and fortune, but SCSI just went out of fashion.

You can always buy a USB3 card to use with any board. I think a lot of manufacturer's aren't interested at present because of the price of the chip from NEC.

I used to update my system every year... cost a fortune, now as long as it's running that's all I bother about Systems are never up to date

Why do you want USB 3 Stefan?..... all your Hard Drives will be SATA Revision 2.0 (SATA 3 Gb/s) and SATA Revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gb/s) is in the pipeline.

Besides everybody seems to like slow USB2 for external HD's even though eSATA 3 has been available for a few years and runs at 6x the speed of USB2

I could never understand the desire to go from a SATA 3 HD in the computer, convert to USB2, transfer to external HD box and convert back from USB2 to SATA 3 to save to the SATA 3 HD when one SATA lead right through does the job in 1/6th of the time

The new DG lens is widely available for around £800

link

Received the Magnifier today. It's in nice condition but the idiots at Mr Cad can't tell an M from a Spotmatic So it's going to have to go back.

Seemed a fair price to me considering it wasn't the DG model.
A Nikon DG recently sold for £510 on ebay

I've had a K10D that went faulty on the green button lens stopdown mechanism after 10,000 actuations. Too expensive to repair (compared to buying a SH K10D) so the camera was basically scrap. The same stopdown mechanism exists on film cameras and I've never known any of them to go faulty.

With digital your taking a big risk buying SH.

I don't think they quoted a film speed for TP-135? There was another called TPS-135, but I think it was TP I used to used for testing lenses about 30 years ago. Pan F was also very good.

Film is very sharp and it's amazing what detail it picks up. I used to use a Peak 20x microfilm viewer to look at it. Unfortunately printing paper isn't very sharp and lots of the detail on the film never makes it onto the print. In fact the highest resolution I've ever managed to transfer onto a print was about 90 lpmm of a negative (taken with a Pentax-A f/1.7) that had over 140 lpmm on it. 90 lpmm is very close to what digital is capable of. No idea how much of that finishes up on paper.

The only good thing about film nowdays is that you can still achieve higher quality quite cheaply by using bigger negatives. Not possible with digital unless your a mega-corporation with loads of cash