Cheeky!

There's no mistaking it's a very fine lens.

However, I've found that the DA17-70 has been covering my needs. The bokeh is very similar, and the DA's contrast and sharpness are superb. The FA35 is wonderfully small though.

If it's any consolation to you Mike, I did hmmm-and-arhhh over selling it...

Matt

Sounds odd to me!
Personally, I'd request some images before considering going further
Might be a case of "If it's too good to be true, then it probably is!"
Matt

It depends what lens. For example, the Pentax SMC-FA 28-70 f/4 suffered from 'cloudy' elements - where the glue that holds the rear two elements together went really milky and horrible. I have had two of these, and others have had the same - and it's non-reversible. The best you can do is scrape the deposit off the element to make it less cloudy (but it's still pretty 'yuck')

A picture of the cloudiness would definitely help
Matt

Sorry to pick you up on this John... you can mix colour spaces to your heart's content, if you have a properly managed colour workflow

But, for the sake of simplicity and overall compatibility sRGB is a much easier approach and can lead to far less pain and frustration (since most domestic items assume sRGB)

...you can spend/waste your life in colour (mis)management issues

Matt

Photoshop will give you the most degree of control. If you want 'fine art' then this will easily give you the approach.

Mono in-camera gives you the most spontaneity.

If you need the best of both worlds, then shoot RAW+JPG (or just RAW) with the camera set to mono. That'll give you the immediacy of in-camera mono, plus the ability to tweak to your heart's content later

Matt

Yes. The distance from the front element to the filter is constant, so for a smaller filter thread it will 'see' less of the filter (for a given focal length).

Matt

Stefan - it's easier to try it

It's the angle of view that becomes the issue. As you take a narrower section of the ND grad on a Z-Pro size filter the range of grad is less.

Consider: a 77mm filter with 90 degree AoV will take a large chunk of the 100mm. You'll get a lovely smooth gradient using a large part of the filter.

Now, a 49mm filter with a couple of degrees AoV will take a considerably smaller chunk of the filter - and you'll get less 'grad' and more 'ND'.

Yes, it goes a bit like that. However, without digging them out and trying this I can't give you a definitive set of filter sizes vs focal length


I found this out the hard way
(And, as I said, it's often easier to bracket the shots and sort it out later! :lol

Matt

You are right - with the 100mm ND grad there is little control when using, say, a 49mm filter thread

It becomes more pronounced when trying to use telephoto on the Z-Pro ND grad - it just becomes a controllable ND, rather than a grad.

There's a bit of combination between filter size and focal length. So, a 67mm filter at 24mm isn't too bad on the Z-Pro size. But a 67mm filter at 150mm isn't really grad anymore.

I've kept a couple of P-size ND grads for this purpose. However, in general I have to say I rarely use even the ND grads - using multiple exposures if absolutely necessary.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Same as you Ken. The *ist-D & *ist-DS need regular cleaning

Since the K10 I've only ever had to blow off stubborn dust - but that seems increasingly rare (with the K7)
It certainly is doing its stuff
Matt

I find one of THE quickest isolation methods around is this:
* Add a new layer in Photoshop
* Change the layer blend mode to "Color"
* Now select the green colour around and paint over the troublesome red petals... they'll go green

I have even found that painting all one colour (or a tight region of colours) across the whole background can drastically simplify the image in no time

Did it on this image - the edges of the petals were just going off, so I recoloured and brought it back to life. Also toned down some of the LHS by recolouring. Same here (that has a before & after too!)

HTH!
Matt