Can you be more specific about what you're seeing?

The Pentax and Canon crops are different sizes, so it's not clear to me that the comparison is a good one. The Canon one is smaller, so all other things being equal, you'd expect it to appear sharper.

Is it as good, if not actually better, in your experience?

It looks pretty dark on my screen, even though it's been calibrated recently!

However, the problem with mine is that it's pretty old, and its max brightness isn't enough to show very dark detail.

Hey, let me have both of them, I'll give it my best, er, shot.

What, with "tests"?

Much as I thought. Shame there's nothing there either very wide, or much longer (as well as fast) and AF.

Who are they targeting, do you think, by introducing such a range of manual focus lenses?

Me too. I had to look it up as well. That's the second one I've had from George. Though I can't remember what the other one was offhand...

#1. He looks a bit miserable in the second one.

Sure, but the pictures that you uploaded to your Picasa web album are both JPEGs - the RAW one must have been converted somehow.

So it's possible that whatever did the conversion treated the two differently.

Very sensible to ask. It's just that there are lots of variables to worry about - there's the exposure, there's whatever happens to it in the computer, and there's the monitor.

Sorting out all these things and being certain of which one causes which effect is not easy.

So maybe stick with either JPEG or RAW for now, and eliminate one of the variables !