The other possibility is the lens not mating properly in the mount - maybe because of wear in the aperture coupling or the lens not fully clicking into place. I have had this same problem with the LX. No doubt there are other things that cause the same symptoms, maybe an intermittent shutter fault - the ME Super will deliver 1/2000 second if the batteries fail, so maybe faulty battery connections as well.

Hi Matt

Nice one!

The picture that we chose for our test was in fact an architectural shot, which coincides pretty well with your Lego image. So I suspect you are quite right that it depends upon the subject matter and we can't use one method only for all pictures.

It really emphasises that we can't slavishly follow any one recommendation and we should experiment for ourselves using others' advice only as a starting point. Bad news for those of us short of time!

Thanks for following up my original message with some practcal experimentation.

Best wishes,

Sue and I ran a beginner's digital night recently down at the ADAPS clubrooms and one of the things we did was test three types of sharpening.

1) Unsharp mask directly on the RGB file
2) First converting to Lab mode and applying unsharp mask to the lightness channel, then converting back to RGB
3) The High Pass method

These were all done on duplicate copies of the same image, we then viewed them all at the same magnification and took a consensus on the preferred shot.

Option 1 was clearly the best result, which was not what we expected. It just goes to show that we need to try all techniques for ourselves without necessarily relying on what publications tell us!

Can anyone else try this and confirm our result?

Hi Mark

To be honest, I would be inclined to ditch the lens and buy another, maybe even second hand. The cost of these lenses is very low and the cost of parts and labour is probably relatively high. I only tried to fix a lens once and inside they are complicated and probably need specialist equipment - they certainly need specialist know-how!

Best wishes

Some good points there, Steve.

Digital does have a quality all of its own, sometimes suitable for the subject, sometimes not. There are also some things it can do that were previously impossible - you could, for example, make infra red pictures without the coarse grain structure of IR film. If you wanted to.

There is a lot of exploring to do yet in digital, so I guess it will challenge us for a long time yet.

In the 18 months or so since I offered my own comments in this thread, much has changed.

I no longer use medium format since I did some still lifes in digital and found they were sharper, cleaner, crisper...I now use digital SLRs and compact cameras for prints happily up to A3 for competition entries, including for landscapes.

I shoot 35mm film for a bit of variety and for the particular properties of some b/w films, but it's less necessary than it was.

Much has changed....

Ther is no doubt that the bigger the format, the better the potential quality can be. But, we don't carry 10 x 8 inch cameras because of the bulk and weight and the cost of film!

So, compromise is the order of the day, and each of us will find that compromise at a different point, which is why you will get comflicting advice.

As an example, my logic runs as follows. I would like to own a Pentax 67, the quality of which is superb, and the lenses are second to none. However, I would have to buy a 6x7 enlarger (mine is only 6x6), the weight of a simple kit with three lenses would be back breaking on the long walks I take, the cost per shot would be high and I would need a sturdy tripod at all times for the optimum results.

So I use a 645n instead, which is hand holdable, but also gives clearly superior quality to 35mm for the optimum in landscape photography and also for the smoother skin tones in studio portraiture. It is still heavy, though, and at present I can only afford the standard lens to go with it. So it has limited functionality at present and I mainly use it in the studio.

For the majority of my photography I use 35mm cameras for which I have a large number of lenses available and I can cover any job I want to do. Quality is good up to the 16x12 inch prints I make and very close to medium format if I use a tripod, T-Max 100 film and expose and process very carefully. It is much better than digital at this time.

Pentax lenses are extremely good, as good as anything else I have seen, and the SMC coating is highly effective at eliminating flare. Which format is a tough choice, but in general I would say decide what the final use of the pictures will be - how large will they be used - and only go above 35mm if you really need to. Otherwise, you might get more enjoyment out of having a wider variety of 35mm kit rather than a restricted specialist medium format one.

Goo luck!

We'll go along with Matt's thoughts as well.

We don't load camera software any more, but use a card reader and access the removable drive via Photoshop. It's simpler, opens the files directly into the application we use for image manipulation and generally saves hassle.

John & Sue

In Photoshop, select Image>Mode>Lab Color
In the channels box, deselect channel a and b leaving only the black and white lightness channel.
Select Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask
Increase the unsharp mask until you are happy that the picture is sharp but not over-sharpened. Click OK
Select Image>Mode>RGB and you are finished!

The purpose of this technique is to sharpen the underlying b/w image without affecting the colour and this helps to avoid colour fuzziness through over sharpening.

In Lab Mode we tend to sharpen between 80%-150% depending on the picture.

John

It is worth checking on compatibility, because not all SD cards will be suitable. We tend to stick to Jessops, Sandisk or Fuji cards (SD and CF) and so far have had no problems at all. Cheaper cards may not be good value in the end.