I'm not sure I know what "twice as good" means ..........

How odd, I don't get any noticeable vignetting with the 18-55mm AK II and it's standard hood.

Andrew

Personally, I think the 18-55mm AL II is a fine lens. For sure, if you make enormous prints or spend a lot of time pixel peeping (at 100% or greater zoom) then some more expensive lenses will be noticeably better at f5.6 and wider. At f8 and onwards, I'm not convinced that you can tell the difference.


Andrew

I don't think so. I used Photoshop 7 until recently and the freebie RawTherapee (RT) for RAW conversion. RT is pretty good (my PEFs are from a K200D - so check), but avoid it if your PC has Windows 7, as RT hangs on a regular basis - most annoying.

The best bet might be to buy Photoshop Elements 8. I got it off Fleabay for less than £40, but you can get it from several places for a little over £50. Once you get it, download Camera Raw 6.1 from the Adobe site - works fine for me.

Andrew

I've done several tests between the 18-55mm ALII kit lens and two different (not-Pentax) 50mm lenses. Providing the subject has enough fine detail (trees in winter at 100m away are good); the camera is on a tripod; it's triggered by cable; the 2sec delay timer is used to lock the mirror up and several shots are taken of the same subject, refocussing between each and then picking the best then results for photos taken at f5.6 are repeatable. They will not look the same, because in the time it takes to do all this, the light will have changed - but the 50s are consistently and obviously sharper than the kit when displayed on-screen at 100%. The differences between the kit lens and any other (that I have access to) within its focal range and at f8 onwards are as near to non-existant as makes no difference - not worth taking the kit off the camera.

I know a lot of folks have reservations about lab tests and MTF curves and they can't tell you anything about colour rendition, but in my view they are the best guide to lens sharpness - providing of course you ignore the portion of the curves beyond about 15mm from the centre if you are using a crop-sensor camera.

Kodachrome 25 was the first 35mm film of any kind that I ever used - in an old Russian compact whose maker I simply cannot remember. I think my baby daughter, Sarah, was on at least some of those slides. She is 38 now.

Andrew

So ........ have I got this right?

* the 18-55mm kit lens is sharper than a Pentax 50 (for some folks)
* a Pentax 50 is sharper than a Rikenon 50 (for some folks)
* a Rikenon 50 is sharper than a 18-55mm kit lens (for some folks)

I suspect that the reality is that all we've proven is how hard it is to test lenses and get reliable results.

Andrew

It's possible that the Kood grey grad might not be completely neutral too.

Andrew

Definitely agree with the Dark Side ....

Quite like this one too (not so sure about the content though). I have it on vinyl, but its ages since I played it.






Andrew

Errrr ......... no. Is your monitor calibrated (mine is)? The posts and the road look a little bluish to me, but then again they would have a slight blue cast as they are lit by the sky not the sun. Inept post processing might also play a part here, as the image they are cropped from (i.e. the first one) looks fine to me.

As an aside, the second and third images are not "shots". They are 100% crops from the first.

Andrew