Got a 300/4.5 FA in a mint condition for a ridiculous price of $450. It's close to perfect in every regard, very fast focusing, also shorter and lighter than the new 300/4. For now for me, end of discussion, I am a very happy camper .

Sharpening is not fixed - and I just put it at 0% It's just my personal visual impression that I get better results applying it in Photoshop itself.

Now THIS is the full quote:
"RAW conversion
As is normal in our digital SLR reviews I like to compare the supplied RAW conversion software and some third party RAW converter. The output from Photo Browser and Laboratory is identical which means they both use the same conversion engine, so we only need to include Photo Laboratory here along with Adobe Camera RAW 4.5.

JPEG - Large/Fine, Default settings
PPL- Pentax Photo Laboratory 3.5 (PEF)
ACR - Adobe Camera RAW 4.5 (DNG) "

So to me it looks that in order to test Pentax PhotoLab they recorded as PEF format, and for Adobe - as DNG IN THE CAMERA. The only thing they felt was redundant was the comparison between two Pentax software products - the Browser and the Lab.

Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to me either. "Uncompressed" should be the same whatever way you record it, right? DP review compares "Pentax PhotoLab (PEF)" with "ACR (DNG)". From this description I am not sure if they first took pics using RAW PEF setting in the camera and converted them to TIFF in PPL and then compared them to RAW DNG converted by ACR (that's the way I understand them) or took them all at the same setting in the camera and then processed with PPL and ACR for comparison.
As to the default 25% sharpening in ACR (I am using Photosho Elements 6.0), for some reason I get the impression that it doesn't do as good a job as either unsharpening mask or sharpness adjustment once the picture is open so I personally turn it off anyway. Not sure about the reviewer in DPR. Should we forward all this discussion to them?

Sorry, you're right.

I would go with K200 or K20. No KM: in US at least it's more expensive than K200, and worse in almost every regard (besides of the silly ISO 3200); only 3 AF points and the camera doesn't even indicate which one it is using!
A bit off-topic, but still important: DP review states results on K20D are better with DNG rather than PEF, so I am using it. I started to use FastStone (free software) for browsing the JPEG, DNG and TIFF files and it is SOOOO nice! For very fast scrolling thru thousands of pictures Picasa is even better, but when I first upload the pics from camera to the laptop and want to see, one after another, what I got there, FastStone is the best: fast, flexible, one-touch full-res (run the mouse over the image and click the button) for pixel-peeping, lots of other options. I didn't even load the Pentax Browser to my computer.

Daniel, thank you so much!
Now, a stupid question: how do you upload these beautiful pictures?
Thanks,
Maxim

A* 300/4 is a manual focus lens to begin with. Yes, I do have problems focusing but since I shoot 3D objects even if I miss a perfect focus on the squirrel's eyes I can still identify the perfect focus plane on the body and pixel-peek the fur. And it is less then perfect, as I've said.

Shame on Pentax indeed for not matching the colors of cheapo 2000 to the old glory of 300/2.8!


As to the noise, I usually stick to ISO 200 as well and yes you can see the difference but it's surprising how little noise you get on 1600 on K20D with little overexposure. This image is straight from the camera (sorry, focus on the left eye): http://www.flickr.com/photos/51031191@N00/3311774938/in/photostream/

and this is with noise supressed and oversharpened:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51031191@N00/3312414372/

Both are full 14.5 MP, no cropping. Let me know if you have problems seeing the full size images.

Also, BTW, some guy from Japan, professional dealer with expensive Pentax gear, has just recently sold on ebay 300/2.8 FA for a $3000 and 250-600/4 FA for $6000 if I remember correctly.

And may I ask you how much would you ask for the 300/2.8 A*? Also, after this disappointment with A* 300/4 I am a bit cautious. It gives an impression of a classic soft portrait lens: soft image superimposed over a sharp one. Shooting squirrels in the backyard I can see every hair, but a colored halo around as well, kind of a dreamy look. Shooting tree brunches against cloudy sky gives me green silouettes behind the focus plane, purple in the front, and plain purple fringing around the edges in the plane itself. I guess, since the underlying image is sharp, there is no damage to the lens but rather the old design with less-than-perfect optical correction. Overall, I have to say, to my very big surprise and disappointment, it's worse than Sigma 400/5.6 APO Macro I've gotten from ebay for $150 6 years ago. I used to use the Sigma all the time on istD, for kids, animals, birds flying by (!) on the beach and it was definitely better. I got tired of 5.6 though.
So, can you post some pictures taken with 300/2.8? I am new to this forum, I don't know if there is an option of sending personal emails, but I've provided one with my registration, so if you don't want to make anybody read our personal communication here, we can switch to regular e-mail...

Good evening everybody!
I've been recently trying to buy a decent 300mm lens for my K20D. Ordered Sigma 100-300/4, tried it very briefly and decided it's not good enough for the weight and the money. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to play with it so maybe I was wrong. Anyway.
Got A* 300/4 - it's definitely soft (!), full of chromatic aberrations and purple fringing. So, here is the first question: is it just a bad copy or inherent problems of the old design? I just might be spoiled by the modern Pentax primes.
Tokina 300/2.8 seems to be an outstanding lens, but I don't think it is available in Pentax mount. Sigma 300/2.8 might be another excellent choice, but it's much more expensive. Then, my choice is between second hand MF Tamron 300/2.8, same in AF (for some reason Photodo gives it much lower scores) and the new Pentax 300/4. I know very well the difference in weight, SDM, coating and so on. Talking just about the image quality, can anybody comment on these three? Or advise me on another choice?
Thank you in advance.
Maxim

P.S. I'll post my pictures with A* 300/4 later.