Fully agree, Kimbo.

Construction quality is better than any subsequent camera (MZ-S perhaps excepted), and it's relatively simple. I'd hate to give a Z1 or MZ-S to a novice.

And in ordinary daylight, the AF performs just as well as any other camera. It's low light and blank walls that catch it out - just like any other camera!

I suspect it will outlast all subsequent AF cameras, too.

G

Mac,

I think one reason for the sharing is that people put a huge amount of time into researching whatever it is that they are interested in, and like to feel that the information gleaned can be put to good use.

Of course, I think we are especially lucky with Pentax. I don't know whether any other brand has such good resources as Stan's and Boz's sites, and the AOHC is very good, too, for M42 fanatics like yourself.

Anway, I'm glad you found the link a useful addition to your information library.

G

I came across a link to this on another forum. You may already know of it, but if not, it's quite interesting.

http://m42.povlab.org/index.php

G

Matt,

I suspected we might hear from you on this topic!

Incidentally, the 85mm doesn't come up too often, and I have seen them go for as little as £550. Perhaps WJB will do you a deal. Especially if he doesn't have to pay Ebay/Paypal fees.

But if not, get the 77mm Ltd, if you don't already have it. You won't regret it. And if you do already have it, then buying an 85 as well would be the height of extravagance.

G

You want SPLOSdb. It's now a little out of date, but should still be useful.

http://www.jcolwell.ca/photography/x-arc/_SPLOSdb/index.htm

Here in the UK, I would expect the prices on Ebay to be (very approximately):

SMCP-FA 50 1:1.4 £120.00
SMCP-FA* 85 1.4 £650.00
SMCP-FA* 300 4.5 £400.00

G

The PMA show in Florida at the end of February might see an announcement. As might the Focus on Imaging show in Birmingham at the same time.

G

I used to shoot a mixture of JPEG and RAW, and now just shoot RAW. It's easier to have just one system, though it does mean you need lots of disk space and high capacity cards.

I would agree that if you have a perfect exposure with limited dynamic range then results from RAW and JPEG will not be much different. And I agree that one should always strive to make the original image as good as can be.

But how often do you really get a perfect exposure?

I don't think there is any reason why you should get sharper images in RAW. It's still the same number of pixels.

I also see no reason to convert to TIFF. If you get everything right in RAW, then a final resize and sharpen is all you need to do, and you might as well do it in JPEG.

Finally, I do find Capture One very fast in use. It's multi-threaded, and you can do several things at once. It's also very easy to copy various settings, or all, from one image to a number of others. In other words, you can work in batches very easily.

The upshot of this is that apart from upload times, which are obviously longer, it takes no more time, perhaps less, to work in RAW than in JPEG.

G

As Matt says, the image is always captured as RAW, and then converted to JPG in the camera if you have specified that you want that to be done. The alternatives are unconverted RAW or TIFF.

So what this comes down to is that you, with a powerful PC, expensive software, and time, can't do better than the tiny processor in the camera, using very general algorithms.

Well, I can believe it at your present level of expertise, but I'm sure you'll improve!

And by the way, this isn't about "received wisdom", it's about common sense. Its about whether expensive and complex tools, applied with intelligence to a specific image can do better than a tiny chip with a tiny program using the same approach to every picture.

G

John,

Since we know that JPEG throws away some detail in compression, while RAW doesn't, and that RAW captures more detail anyway, (12 bit against 8 bit) it MUST be possible to produce a better image, or at least no worse, with RAW than with JPEG, even if you have to convert the RAW file to JPEG at the end.

I have to say that your results seem to me to be a test, not of RAW versus JPEG, but of how well you yourself have mastered RAW conversion.

Sorry if that's a bit brutal, but you admit yourself that your RAW experience is limited, and your results do seem to fly in the face of reason.

G

I find I seldom need to do much at all after the RAW conversion in Capture One LE. Resizing and final sharpening I usually do in Irfanview becuase it's so quick, and can deal with a batch very easily.

Note that Irfanview has a better sharpening tool in the Effects Browser (Ctrl-E).

G