If you look at the histogram for your Image A, it is not clipped at either end - so it can be manipulated to look natural. This would obviously not be the case if the highlights were significantly clipped.

If I had been taking that photo, I would have used single centre point metering on the brightest part of the image and then opened up 2 stops. This certainly works well on a K30 (and on the K5 series), with no clipping and no obvious noise in shadows. You might find it worth trying with your K7.

Andrew

I must be missing some of the plot here.

I copied the image labelled "IMAGE A) Mid Range (Darker) bracket - PDCU unadjusted" and dropped it into Photoshop Elements. I then saved it unaltered as a psd file and imported that into Lightroom 5.3. A few minutes twiddling with sliders in the Develop module produced this .........




So, remind me - why is it that I need to use HDR?

Andrew

I have sympathy for what you are saying here. I get similar feelings when I see HDR images - and the kind of composites that seem to have become so popular in *some* camera clubs.

Andrew

It is amazing what you can do with the 18-55mm kit lens. Nice!

Andrew

I cannot say for certain whether the focus peaking implementation on the K30 is as good as that on the K-01 as I do not have a K-01, but I can say that it works well on the K30, particularly if you use it on a tripod.

I bought a split image focussing screen from focusingscreen.com for a K200 some years ago. Although it helped with manual focussing, I found that it was never quite as good as I had hoped. Generally, I found that for critically sharp focus, I still needed focus confirmation from the camera - the split image screen just helped me get there a bit quicker with manual lenses. One definite downside of split image screens is that, although centre weighted metering still works OK, single point metering becomes erratic and unusable - often a couple of stops out.

Having used a K30 for a couple of years now, I wouldn't swap it for any of the K5 series. I think there would be little, if any, difference in IQ and the loss of focus peaking, for me, would be a deal breaker.

Andrew

Dealing with people you can trust is one of the BIG pluses of this forum.

Thanks again
Andrew

This was delivered in perfect condition by My Hermes at around 3pm today. Fantastic packaging - you were determined that it would not be damaged, weren't you?

I have just have a quick look at the lens - looks perfect, just like new. It mounts and works fine. I can't wait to try it out properly.

Thanks very much, Doug.

Cheers
Andrew

Not a problem - thanks for keeping me up to speed

Andrew

+1 ...... contrast looks fine to me too.

Andrew

PM sent

Andrew