If your lens doesn't take you quite close enough (happens to me often), then perhaps consider cropping your shots - you have plenty of scope to that with a 16+ megapixel camera. That way you can home in on the feature that got your attention, and showcase it in your image.

Sharp & colourful shot of a pretty little bird.

Heaps of detail in it.

These do look sharp, so the lens is good, and the K-5's performance also given your description of the originals.

They didn't appear to be overly noisy even before NR was applied - nice work.

Well done Aiki & the placegetters (HCs included). Good topic and comments Jon too.

Did you poach this idea from somewhere Aiki?

G'day to you too. Good to see another K-x user on board.

Doc, my Dell monitor shows the image in your link in exactly the way you described is as well. Mine is a U2410 and has been calibrated (at least that's assuming my own amateurish attempts at that actually succeeded).

No issue with the wedge, as T-T has indicated above.

Everything should be set to work on only one Gamma setting, and that should be 2.2 for a PC (1.8 for earlier MACs, but I believe later ones may use 2.2 just like PCs). NVidia's software should play no part in anything at all, otherwise its settings will conflict with that of your calibration software.

Your calibration software should at the least be able to tell you how accurately your monitor approximates that setting of 2.2 in terms of Gamma (although it will analyse a lot more besides).

I'm giving this fortnight's a miss, Jon - apologies, ran out of time!