I did mean to mention that the lens you have is not a macro lens but a normal telephoto.

If you really want to get very close for small insects and other small subjects then a proper macro lens will be marked as such. "Macro " zooms do not substitute for a proper macro lens as they do not focus down to life size magnification.

Welcome to the forum.

The SMC Pentax-M 100mm f2.8 is a lovely lens capable of very fine results. However, it does not have the electronic contacts for full compatibility with the Pentax DSLRs.

You need to activate the custom function that allows use of the aperture ring and then use the camera manually for best results.

You would be much better using lenses of the A series and later, basically any lens with an "A" on the aperture ring and any AF lens. This will give much greater ease of use.

Assuming the dioptre adjustment on the viewfinder eyepiece has been adjusted OK and that the camera has been set to centre spot focusing, there are two factors to consider.

First, focus on the main subject with a half pressure on the shutter release, hold this to lock the focus point, recompose your picture and then complete the shutter release.

Second, remember that you need a fast enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake, or to avoid subject movement. Swaying trees for example.

Your "crap pictures" are not that far off being OK, but you do need to practice holing the camera steady and selecting the correct point on which to focus.

Hope that helps.

I was helping someone with their new K100D yesterday and I was very impressed. Lovely camera, just as nice as my old *istDS. Beautifully made and very well thought out.

The results are also very impressive, so in the context of this thread there's no reason not to expect excellent results.

I don't think you could put a 67 top plate on a 6x7 camera. The 6x7 has two main versions, originally without MLU but later with MLU and much preferred.

The 67 is still a sturdy camera but has a lot more plastic in its construction and is also in possession of MLU.

Niblue can't be with us just now, so he has asked me to fill in for him. Here then is the judging:

justgetoutandride has given us more candle light than heat I think, but it has been done very well. I think I might have played around with the composition a little more. Very good exposure.

ChrisA has excelled himself with this fire. We have heat, action, a wonderful silhouette, great exposure and a terrific composition. This is, therefore, without doubt my winner

amoringello takes us back to yesteryear in a way - this sort of image was very popular from probably the 1930s through to the 1950s. Nice imagination, again perhaps a bit more experimentation with the composition.

Lilly takes a different tack and there is no denying the heat implicit in this image. A very nice arrangement, great colour and a worthy second place

Clarky offers a very cosy looking dragon, curled up in a way not unlike our cat. We would have to believe that it breathed fire, but it looks far too nice for that...But the idea is spot on even if the dragon is too sleepy to fry us just now.

GlynM has found a fiery looking plant, another good idea. It needs i think more sharpness, but again the concept is there and worth developing further.

Don has had a very impressibe turn of thought with this one. The combination of photography and artwork blends well, the only thing that holds it back is the lack of a feeling of participation of the model. She doesn't look as though she feels the situation, so maybe these flames are not real but just illusion...

McBrian takes the glow of the sunset as it fades just out of sight. A great bit of colour but not a mass of heat at this stage in the sunset.

Prieni has an impressive viewpoint here and I think we can take heat from a volcano as being very real. This is also very well composed and achieves the distinction of third place

golfdiesel has had a similar idea to the winning shot but did not have the advantage of the dramatic setting. A little more crispness in the silhouette would improve the image, but it is a good shot.

Galoot has thought up another good idea. Very clever and well presented. Good lateral thinking.

viewfinder uses a similar idea and there is no doubt that this is all about heat. The composition lets it down slightly, but a reworked image could be very strong.

So there we have it. Congratulations to all.

Would our winner ChrisA be so kind as to now pick up the baton and offer us our nest challenge? If you post a new thread I'll make it a sticky for you.

Niblue is currently cooking in the heat at EuroDisney so has asked me to start off his competition. The subject is "Heat" (can't guess what made him think of that.)

Deadline is Sunday at Midnight and hopefully niblue will be back in time to judge.

Minimal rules as before, but please keep this thread for entries only until after the judging. Anything else will disappear...After the judging feel free to comment.

Good luck everyone.

Modulation Transfer Function summarises the lens performace and the objective is for a pattern with say 100% contrast to have 100% contrast on the CCD. In practice this is not possible and certain optical defects compromise the image, so a MTF value of 70% might be achieved.

Now we know how well contrast is reproduced we have to define at what level of detail. At low resolutions the MTF will be high as it is not difficult to design a lens that reproduces coarse detail. Let's say 90%. At very high resolutions the detail will be reproduced ever more fuzzily and our MTF value might be only 30%.

All these properties are interdependent and if you design a high resolution lens you have to accept compromises in some other property, maybe contrast, maybe distortion.

Many modern lenses are very sharp, have good resolution, high contrast but the "drawing" (the ability to have straight lines reproduced as straight lines and not curves) is often allowed to drift a little.

The lens is critical in providing a high quality image to the film or sensor. There are plenty of books on optics if you want to pursue the subject.

Ah, you've hit the nail on the proverbial head.

Sharpness can be enhanced by increasing edge contrast. You can observe for yourself how sharpening works by magnifying a part of an image on screen and observing at pixel-level what happens when you switch a USM effect on and off. The various settings in USM define howmuch and over how large an area, etc. the effect applies.

Soft means less sharpness.

Now definition will define the amount of deatail in an image, but how sharply that definition is recorded is another matter. German lenses traditionally had relatively low contrast but very high definition or detail. Japanese lenses came along with masses of gorgeous contrast but lower definition. Guess which won?

I was worried about the camera club judge who looked at my medium format on a tripod fine grain film shot and said "It doesn't look very sharp..." This was just after he told us about his smeary eye drops. I digress.

Who can tell, but the price is right just now and will not get better, probably. I'd take the plunge and enjoy the K10D as it is, which is very satisfactory.

I seem to be an (almost) lone voice here in that I don't suggest using RAW. My reasoning is that it adds more work, takes up more card space and I have not seen any work so far that suggests that it is superior in practice (it is superior in theory) to using the best quality JPEG. I have the A3 prints aplenty to prove the point, but I can't show you those on the web unfortunately.

The JPEG files are not soft, just relatively unsharpened. All DSLRs produce soft images from the CCD and this needs "capture sharpening" (maybe) and "output sharpening" (certainly). Martin Evening's books explain this thoroughly and are well worth reading.

I use different amounts of sharpening for the K10D than I did with the *istDS and I think this mainly relates to the increased pixel count, but maybe to the degree of processing the camera does as well. Don't forget that even RAW files are to some small extent processed by the camera, and by default are given 25% USM as a capture sharpening in Photoshop.

I wouldn't worry about it, just use the camera and learn to get the best out of it. After all when a replacement comes out there will be another one in the wings following that. How long can you wait?