I said 'bite', not sharpness. Some films reputedly have a fine grain structure designed to give sharp looking prints. I guess that's a property of micro-contrast rather than how many lines the film/lens is capable of resolving - I think 'sharpness' can be about more than lpmm... Look at unsharp mask in photoshop - makes images sharper, but does not increase resolution at all.

The larger imaging area of 135 film is less demanding on lenses, and the grain structure of some films will add a bit of bite too I imagine.

Still for sale, price drop to 250.00 inc postage to UK.

Tamron would be 225.00 - will post pics soon!

I would hold off until the new DA is out. The F is very good but a bit plasticky and odd looking. And I bet the upcoming DA version will undercut it on price.

Maybe grab a cheap M version to tide you over. Its got a nicer build than the A version and is prettier. It's not so bad using stop down metering.

DA, FF, and K-01 aren't exactly separate systems though. Basically they've got Q, K, and 645 mounts. As for the Gxr system, that system has it's niche but apart from catering for Leica users, it seems a bit limited in its appeal.

Minor point Algi, but I believe it was head of Pentax R&D, Mr Kitazawa, who was interviewed. But his comments were slipperier than a weasel that had fallen into a vat of KY jelly, so it's hard to draw any firm conclusions from the discussion.

Ricoh plans black and white compact. Interesting idea! Ricoh is already quite popular with b&w street shooters.

These shots are helping me make my mind up about getting this lens. Lovely stuff.

The OP wanted to blur out the background, so actually the wide aperture and small depth of field may have been appropriate in this case.

The problem in 1 & 2 seems to be that the point of focus is not quite where the OP intended - focussing using the centre spot on the suject, then moving the camera to recompose the image (we don't always want the subject central) would be my advice.

Stopping the lens down a stop or two (e.g. f5.6 rather than f3.5) might increase the depth of field a little, allowing more of the foreground to be in focus, without making the background too sharp.

You could always crop the Sony images to get the same....

(Or use an APSC Sony of course!)