Yeah, you're right. I bought the three year warranty. I had the same thing with my istD.
It soft focused and I waited until I had the K10D in my hands (and 14 days before the end of the warranty) to have the istD serviced.

It came back with such a nice sharp image I wished I had sent it back much earlier!! So maybe I'll service this one earlier than later. Guess we'll have to see how much trouble it gives me.


Hmmm... Something I didn't think about earlier, could this also affect the metering? Perhaps some of the metering issues I'm seeing is also due to the sensors being off. I am perhaps assuming one set of rules being applied when they are actually skewed to another area of the frame???

Yeah maybe, but would you rather go eight weeks without the camera? Last repair took that long. I won't do that until it is totally unusable!!
So for now I will live with it.
Argh!

He, he, followed the directions for assessing where the focus points are located. Simple enough. it seems my focusing is a tad bit off center, as I have seen in th past. This may also be why I assumed my focus was off (faulty assumptions that focus was in the center, and extremely narrow DOF).

I know Pentax cameras are supposed to have cross shaped sensors for all sensors, but I could not get that sort of accuracy. As far as I could tell the center is cross shaped, the rest appear to be rectangular. I was able to discern the following...

All focusing points are down lower than expected center of the focusing screen.
The Center sensor is a definite cross shape (I can roughly outline the corners where the object is seen and not seen).
The top and bottom centered sensors overlap the center sensor.
The other sensors do leave a gap between other sensors.

This image roughly shows what I found.



Obviously, for the test sheet, if you cannot see that the line is in focus and you rely on the camera to focus on what you "think" is happening, this sort of thing is going to cause the test to fail.
Last time I was using text form a book. The line I "thought" was in focus appeared to be in the viewfinder, but in reality the camera was focusing a line or two forward. Thus I would think the camera was back-focusing.

I suppose I could have this repaired, but now that I know exactly where the sensors are I can compensate for that.

EDIT: By the way, I uses selective focus to force each individual sensor to be used. I focused on a white sheet of paper with a small black dot drawn on it. With this I was able to move the dot side to side, up and down to outline where the sensor edges were at each location.

Well, I've done this test half a dozen times in the past. I've run this on pages of text and real objects. obviously wit tripod, etc...
Maybe my methods were flawed in some way?

So, today I downloaded the test chart, set everything up just right, and wouldn't you know my camera looks fine. I've tried a few different lenses. I get an almost perfect 50/50 to 1/3 - 2/3 split of front to back focus. (Perhaps my methods today are flawed?? )

I'm not sure why so many of my photos appear to be in focus just ahead of my intended focus point. But I think I need to figure that out because my camera appears to be just fine.

I guess I run these again some time later to see if the results stay consistent.


Anyway, thanks David for the link to the chart.
I'm not sure I feel good about the results just yet, but at least now I have something consistent to check against for a later date.

Perhaps it is not the diopter's fault??
I don't know if it is a common issue but I seem to have heard similar issues. My K10D definitely focuses in the wrong spot.

Take a newspaper, book or other evenly patterned object in front of the camera at a 45 degree angle. Get a real small DOF and focus on a single line.
You should see some amount of text in focus both behind and in front of the specific spot that you focused upon. View images on screen to make sure.

For my K10D, the line I focus on is just barely in focus, but the line immediately behind is out of focus. Several lines in front are in focus. I believe this is not how the focus system should work.
It is very frustrating at times, but I am not quite yet willing to loose my camera for 8 weeks while it gets shipped off for repairs.

If your slaves are not PTTL compatible, I don't think you'll have any issues with more than one flash being fired. But... you will need the main flash to be on the hotshoe as the trigger -- or connected with pc cable via an adapter on the hotshoe. As long as the flash on your hotshoe is not PTTL compatible, it will not know to fire more than once.
If your slaves are then configured to fire when a flash is detected, you should be good to go... just like the old days.

That is too funny! And here I thought someone merely used Photoshop to drawn that on the adjacent green!

So in 1000 years, will Homer be thought of as some spiritual icon?
I guess to many, he already is! Doh!!

It seems to download fine for me at the moment... but their site does seem a bit slow. I'd say try again. The internet isn't perfect.

I just have to say that I love SilkyPix. Definitely give it a try.
The free version gives you more control then the Pentax Photo laboratory. But it does have limitations on its use. For instance, it may have a few preset levels of sharpening instead of allowing full use of the available sliders.

I think you'll find it is worth the download.

Open a folder.
Menu: Tools -> Folder Options.
Choose the View tab.
See if the "Do not cache thumbnails" is checked.
Make sure it is un-checked. Apply changes, then be sure to click to Apply to all Folders button.

Alternatively, if selected, try turning it off. It might solve some of the issues. But you'll likely have to wait for images to refresh every time (rather than manually doing so).

That will give you an idea of the relative brightness of each light used in the image and a way to consistently control the lighting each time.
If your subject is exposed properly at F11, and the light on the background is set for exposure of f5.6, the background would be that much darker than the subject.

It seems with some flash at F11 that the tungsten would be way over powered, but I guess if the shutter is slow (1/8 sec), they will start to show up pretty well.
Not enough experience with either to make a guess what sort of wattage on the tungsten would be required.