I have to say, my recent thread on my experiences with the 18-135 will be my last such, given the lack of interest, and suggestions like this.

When helpful information such as "nice lens" is preferred to a fairly time-consuming exercise in photographing, cropping, uploading and commenting, in order to give hopefully at least a reasonably objective view, and all the while taking great pains to try and find a balance between ultimate pixel-peeping and real-world examples, the incentive to repeat the exercise does dwindle a little.

Well fair enough.

But for most people's purposes, the requirement is that, for any given lens, stop-down metering should give the same shutter speeds as wide-open metering, followed by applying standard reciprocity calcs to get the required exposure at the selected aperture.

With the K10D it doesn't, with a bigger error as the smaller apertures are approached.

I don't know about the post-K20D DSLRs, but I'll be testing it out with my K-5.

Is it also so documented on the K-x?

If not, there isn't a lot of nonsense at all, there's one assertion, followed by a retraction, so fair play to Frogherder on that.

I was quite pleased with the AF and AE on the K-5 yesterday.

I had no time at all to prepare for this shot - just heard them coming, grabbed the camera, turned and banged off three shots as they went past.

Here's the best one (the whole frame):

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0039-ff.jpg[/IMG]

Here's a crop of the swans only:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0039-swansonly.jpg[/IMG]

And here's a more pleasing composition:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0039.jpg[/IMG]

I tried this kind of shot many times on the K10D, and never got anything usable. I'm not really fluent with the K-5 yet, so to get this as early on as this is very encouraging.

I'm starting to think the 18-135 is going to be quite usable.

If you meter with the lens wide open, you'll get the right result just by calculating the exposure yourself, applying the reciprocity rule, for the aperture you choose. It's all the camera does in A mode, after all.

It's perfectly possible to use K and M lenses successfully, just not all that convenient for auto-exposure.

There's even an upside - K and M lenses are *very* much cheaper than their A series counterparts

Definitely on the K10D, it does not, with K and M lenses, or A lenses not set to A.

I have no direct experimental experience of the K20D, though I've read that it wasn't fixed, nor K-x K-r, or K-7. I haven't tested it yet on the K-5.

Ok, I see what you mean. It' doesn't look like barreling to me.

Any chance of seeing the unedited full frame?

Nor do I.

But I hope he's better than his videographer.

I don't see much evidence of barrel distortion in these. Have you done anything to remove it, because the lines look quite straight?

The verticals seem to diverge a little towards the top of the pictures, but that's not barrel distortion. This is barrel distortion.

The Sigma 10-20 that I have (the EX DC, F4.5-5.6) does show marked barrelling at 10mm, but it's all gone by 12mm.

Ok, here are a couple more. Again, nothing remarkable about the pictures, just a couple of other focal lengths.

All the following have been sharpened a little using the high pass filter overlay technique, starting with a DNG.

First up, 70mm and F8:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0025-wf-hp.jpg[/IMG]

A couple of 100% crops from it... first near the centre:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0025-cr1-hp.jpg[/IMG]

And this, near the edge:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0025-cr2-hp.jpg[/IMG]

Now at 135mm:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0026-wf-hp.jpg[/IMG]

And again the crops:

Centre:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0026-cr1-hp.jpg[/IMG]

Edge:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0026-cr2-hp.jpg[/IMG]

A little unfair this last crop - guaranteed to show the fringing. So here's one more:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0026-cr3-hp.jpg[/IMG]


Not as awful, but it's clearly not near as good at the long end.

I still don't think it's too bad - I'd never use crops at 100% for anything serious anyway.

So here's one more - just for the colours really. A bit of contrast and a touch of extra saturation.

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/K-5%20and%2018-135%20early%20impressions/IMGP0293.jpg[/IMG]

1/160 at F10, ISO 200 and 68mm, according to the EXIF.