All that white powdery stuff everywhere - is that moire?

So Tungsten gives you a pure grey then. Interesting, as tungsten lights to the eye look orangey, yet these LEDs are meant to look white.

So the nest question is, did your grey card actually look like this second photo under the LED lights, or are you restoring it under a tungsten setting to what it would in fact look like in real daylight?

If they were JPEGs there would have been a degree of automatic sharpening applied in camera - if RAW (and as puma said there was no PP) then they are obviously nice and sharp 'out of the box', so therefore we have obvious high potential to go from here - eg make them more sharp, print big at great quality etc

This is the trend I see. The sort of automatic 'all day' consuming passion for your chosen professoin / hobby that John idealised above is long gone, at least in the high street.

I witnessed recently, in an old independent toy / model railway shop (in Tattenham Corner of all places!) a passionate exchange of views, preferences and demand for exact specific items of model train stock between a man I took to be the owner and a Hornby representative with his catalogues out and laptop open.

The owner seemed to know exactly what specific customers would likely be attracted to in the latest releases and updates to stock - even considering the exact colours of 'locos' based on what he knew a customer already had.

It was impooible for me to visualise a similar conversation in a high street photography store

Do these lights have a specified colour temperature figure? That could give a ball park starting point for a manual WB setting. Daylight WB, apparently, is not the way to go here. Is there already a WB preset (one of the fluoresents maybe?) that is a better option to start with?

Andrew, could you post your shot with another preset selected, or a manual colour temperature that gives you the most accurate rendering of the scene you remember, and tell us the figure it requires.

Do you have to prove an interest in or any prior knowledge of photography to get a job in a chain camera shop I wonder?

I use Fullscreen Photo Viewer, seems very clear and detailed to me. Free also.

link

I'm always happy to be shouted down by playing devils advocate - so here goes.

The OP asked about filters for his K-x, a digital camera. There's been some great advice already. But, really, nowadays for digital shooting, is it really the best advice to tell someone to buy all these bits of glass / resin and plastic holders and metal rings, head off into the hills with it all and fiddle around attaching it all, squinting and lining up horizons, twisting and turning things to get it all perfect??

Isn't the best advice nowadays to read up and practice using quality image software to achieve the same results with far more flexibility and variety of effects and implementation ?

I remember the physical kind of satisfaction in handling all the filters and the care and consideration it added to preparing the shot. But there was a lot of frustration as well at the extra messing around, dropped items and other annoyances - and in rapidly changing light it could cause a missed chance that doesn't return.

Are we really adding to image quality with these filters, or at least would we not obtain the same quality with intelligent software adjustments and merging of different exposures (if the DR was that high)??

Yes David, I've also seen some convincing comparisons with clearly better definition from the 'S' version, assuming we can trust that what we're seeing is straight 'out the box'.

This is the issue that keeps bugging me - there's no response from others so maybe no one knows yet! Could we actually just obtain the same crisp detailing from a 'normal' K5II images by being clever and applying high quality sharpening techniques in software? This would be cheaper if it were true.

Hey - how 'bout we try it out - fancy a 'sharpening shootout' ?

Yes, for a lot of people, but not for those who already have f1.4 primes, lucky people!