Portraits need us to focus on the eyes, unless there's a reason to change that such as the famous shot of the boxer, concentrating on his huge gloved fists.

There's not much DOF at wide apertures, so the subject moving and the photographer moving can easily throw the focus point out. Just keep shooting and the success rate will improve.

It's also possible to take great portraits at apertures even down to f/22 and many classic Rollei TLR portraits do this.

The most important things are the eyes and matching the technique to the characteristic that you want to bring out in the subject.

It's a difficult one to answer. We usually go back to film for a specific reason, be it quality (medium format perhaps), experimentation, or some specific characteristic that we can only achieve on film.

As you don't know why you want to do it, it's tricky to advise. However, it is very unlikely you will get quality using a $40 scanner. Proper film scanning is a slow and expensive business. Likewise processing. The negative is the most vital component and if it's processed badly then all else is to little avail.

I would start off by using a service that provides processing plus a small print for reference and a scan of the negatives on CD. You will get what you pay for, so if you want high resolution scans then it won't be cheap.

You would make a selection in Photoshop and apply changes to that area only.

It's what I see HDR for as well Mike. It brings a dynamic range that's far too wide under control so that it can be reproduced on screen or print. So, shadows that would turn black have detail.

That's what's happened with this shot, the straight shot just has totally black shadow areas.

But what has that to do with the lenses Nigel? Lenses don't have selective contrast controls.

A high contrast lens showing deep low contrast? :

Shot at 11mm.

Flare with ultra-wide lenses is always a possibility, but I was very impressed with the performance of the 10-17mm Fisheye zoom in this example. You can see the sun is just out of frame top left, so it was pretty much shining right into the lens.

I would start by resetting factory defaults. If you've got lost making adjustments, then that's probably the best place to start.

Then check if all is well with your lenses on the K20D.

Then just go out and about taking pictures with the K-5, normally, without worrying about whether the focusing is spot on or not. When you view them on the computer see if you have sharp pictures. If you do, then forget it and enjoy it. If not, then there may be a fault or a misalignment. It's unlikely that three lenses would be so far out as to cause a problem with, let's say, landscapes shot at f/8 or f/11.

If there is still a problem, then post some images and we can have a look ourselves.

It may be that someone around Coventry could have a look, I would if I was a whole lot closer, but in any event starting how I've outlined might start unravelling the problem.

We were at Little Moreton Hall today and I've just done a new EPZ blog showing some of the images. I was very impressed with the in camera HDR of the K-5, and I hadn't actually used it before. This scene had far too great a brightness range for the sensor, but switching in the HDR on the first step of three settings gave a very realistic result. The camera rattles off three exposures, blends them and even aligns if the box is selected.