I dunno if it's just me, but I have found that changes made to jpegs in lightroom have a more drastic effect than they do with RAW shots.

I took an overexposed shot the other week, and it gave me the chance to compare how I could recover the highlights both in RAW (Lightroom) and Jpeg (CS3).

Original shot (1:1 crop):


Edited Jpeg:


Edite RAW:

Very interesting, colourful and well captured. But this reminds me of a particularly nasty scene from The Mist...

We're drifting away from the topic, but I'll add that the Tamron 17-50mm is a very versatile lens - it does shallow dof very well without being soft at wider apertures, and of course it's great stopped down too.

Back to the OP's topic, I'd recommend the sigma 10-20mm or the more expensive pentax 12-24mm. I believe the sigma IQ can rival the pentax if you take care to find the 'sweet spots' - for me this is 12mm at f8-f11, when the sigma's distortion is considerably reduced. You can afford to stop down becuase ultrawides are tolerant of hand holding especially with SR. Speeds of 1/4s are not unusable if you can brace the camera and breathe out slowly while taking the shot

I have had the Helios 44-4K for a few days (an excellent buy from Vince), and although I haven't had chance to take any 'proper' pictures with it yet, I can confirm everyone's observations with the 'swirly bokeh' (swirl-keh). It's as if the background of the shot has a rotational blur to it....




But what on earth causes this strange - and to my eyes quite attractive - effect? :

Now THAT is a shot! I love how it blends in. A bit of contrast and warm up would improve it IMO.

Sour grapes, folks. Pentax already have a head start over the Nikon and Canon FF line ups. They have the 31, 43 and 77 FA ltds - lenses which are 'suboptimal' on APSC.

Just the 800 Dave? Great first shot, I am very jealous of your choice of holiday!

Not going to comment on the first shot!

Excellent set though, only the blown windows in no.2 lets it down.

Well the condition of the lens really is 'as new' like you described Vince. It's a solidly crafted lump of metal and glass that puts modern lenses - even DA Ltds - to shame in terms of build quality. And I'm seeing the famous swirl-keh in early test shots - great stuff!

Looks great! Had never heard of Cafenol. What do you use as fixer? Don't tell me PG tips lol