No, mine was safely back in its box before greytop turned up with his duffer. I only took a few test shots with mine, at f4 and 250mm of course, and I was very impressed by it but I've not seen the images on screen yet. In camera they look good.

For what reason did you make this a poll?

Glad you got it sorted, good to meet you.

If you want to send it to me, I'll have a go at fixing it. PM me. No charge, I'm just interested in the problem. I can bin it for you if unsuccessful.

MIKE-P: Much better, and hand held too.

GREYTOP: Did you have SR turned on or off? It should be off for tripod mounted.

Have a look at Gerhard's shots at http://forum.digitalfotonetz.de/viewtopic.php?p=790373#790373. His seem to show much better performance at f4, though none taken at 250mm & f4.

The camera manual should describe these functions, if the camera supports it.

I don't think those extra functions work on the later cameras John. I believe only the power zooming function works. Those functions were included in the Z range of cameras (I have a Z20 and a 100-300mm power zoom lens) but were omitted on the later models. I don't think these functions worked on the MZ-S either, but I can't remember.

I too will be disappointed if the softness at f4 shown by your examples is typical. I'm collecting mine today but have no camera with me to make any tests.

I think we should expect the performance at f4 to be something less than at f8, but not as different as is evidenced by your images.

I think we can expect all lenses, no matter what they cost, to be at their worst at the long end of the zoom range and wide open. The quality displayed here would be unacceptable to me.

My son has a Canon 70-200L IS f2.8 lens and it is better at 200mm & f2.8 than these images. OK it's a more expensive lens, but the time we have waited for the DA* 60-250, you'd have thought Pentax would have got it right by now.

I have a Jobo GigaOne 40Gb drive and the behavior I have described occurs with mine.

It is odd, I know, and there is no mention of it in the manual. Maybe mine is faulty. I certainly don't use it very much. It was one of those bits of kit that I thought would be useful for long trips. Trouble is, I haven't made any long trips for years.

I'm in UK at the moment and my gear is at home in Spain. When I get back next Wednesday I will double check my claim and report back.

Interesting to note that the OP does not seem to have returned to this thread so we've no idea yet whether my reformat suggestion has fixed it. I've PM'd him.

Make sure you make a copy of the catalog file as well. It has a .lrcat extension.