Amazing, and there's me thinking he played Manuel in Fawlty Towers

I must confess that most of my mags. are from the late '80s to mid '90s but I don't recall any articles to that effect.
Some early AF lenses felt sloppy because of the new light-weight polycarbonate materials and the internal focussing mechanisms meant that they didn't feel as 'tight' but optically, they were pretty much on a par with equivalent MF lenses.
Pentax certainly haven't compromised with their primes and why have such good AF lenses if the camera is not going to focus them precisely?

I'm not saying that AF cameras are perfect and no matter how good the AF system is, it may be possible to improve the result with a little manual adjustment but I'm sure that we wouldn't be getting such good results if a) the lens was deliberately unsharp and b) the camera chose hyper-focussing.

I'd certainly be interested to see the results of a proper test

Brings me back to my point - why bother with a contrast detecting AF system if it'll be over-ruled by an algorithm that give precedence to the lens information?
Pentax design their cameras for use primarily with their own lenses and the *D, being pro-spec., is hardly a 'point and shoot' model.

I can see that being biased toward HF focussing could be a useful optional mode (like the Z1s MTF function) but having a top-line auto-focus camera that is set that way by default, must surely be a clear sign of 'shooting one's self in the foot'

Well I still can't see it but I suppose Pentax may have designed cameras with multi-point AF to select an average between the distances detected.

When the Canon EOS5 was tested, the user reported that the camera often decided to focus sharply on a point that was not the most important one and he had to manually select the one he wanted.
Perhaps Pentax decided that this was not the best solution to speeding up the process of point-and-shoot (the purpose of multi-AF) and chose instead to average out the distances and thereby maximize the zone of apparent sharpness - essentially hyper-focal focussing!

Switching to single (spot) AF, sets the camera to proper AF mode and acts like the earlier SAFOX systems, otherwise there'd be no need for the camera to have a built-in AF system at all!

As for AF lenses being deliberately designed to be less sharp than their earlier counterparts, I can't quite see that either and I don't think the MTF charts support that theory.

A further thought has just occurred to me:

I'm not aware of any lens that transmits it's focusing distance to the camera (ie. how far away the subject is) so each time you focus the lens, the camera would first have to adjust it to either the near or distant limit in order to calculate the amount of rotation required in the opposite direction for it to achieve the hyperfocal distance.
If however the distance were known, then the lens would only change focus when you changed the aperture and not if the subject moved, or you would have to manually adjust the focus to shift the DOF - which is not the case!

Mannesty, I don't quite follow that hypothesis myself!

If it were true, surely it could only be guaranteed to work properly with genuine Pentax lenses and even then, it would mean that you could never actually achieve perfect focus in AF mode.
All lenses (Pentax and non-Pentax) I've tried on my DL have focussed perfectly and in the same way as I would expect with my Z1-P.
Also, there would be no need for AF sensors in the camera because it would 'know' what lens was fitted and how much focus adjustment would be needed for the chosen aperture.
As it is, the cameras use contrast levels to ascertain focus - wouldn't this be pointless if they were to automatically ignore the focal distance that resolves the highest contrast, in favour for one that delivers greater DOF?

I've often thought that myself, particularly as today's lenses are usually smaller (shorter) than their earlier counterparts, zooms in particular. How can two lenses of different physical lengths have the same focal length?
It's the AOV that is the same, not the 'length'.

If my Tamron 24mm (84 degree AOV) was literally half the length of my A50 F2 (47 degree AOV), it would be about 15mm long......now that's what I call a pancake lens!

Have you tried 7Dayshop of CF cards, George?

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/default.php?cat=6&type=6010&go=SEARCH&r=20060406

No. 4, from a purely technical point of view.
The amount of detail is stunning but the lashes are just becoming messy and unnatural looking (is that what they mean by 'jaggies'?)

Given the subject matter and the fact that we are just seeing a crop, I think I prefer No. 2 and imagine that the whole image is both pleasing to the viewer and flattering to the subject

Matt, you're certainly a most accomplished photographer, for such a 'spring-chicken'