Flash didn't work properly on my K-01, Metz have issued a firmware update to version 4 for the 48-AF1 flash for the Pentax model, now it works perfectly in any mode so there must be something different about it.

http://www.metz.de/en/flash-units/firmware-download-flash-units/mecablitz-48-af-...

Clearing the fungi, unfortunately, is not the end of the problem, most fungi of a type that grows on glass secrete Hydrofluoric acid which eats into the glass, the glass becomes food for the fungi.

So even though you have removed the fungus the lens will still be etched glass where the fungi once was and the lens will tend to flare.

I have heard of, but never tried, using the resin that car windscreen repairers use.

You can have the lens reground and polished or renew the lens from a scrap lens that has damage elsewhere, but that gets expensive.

Just avoid any lens that has fungi, unless the lens is rare and has real value, fungi is normally death to a lens.

UV kills fungi, sometimes all you need to do is put the lens in bright sunlight for a week or two if the infection is slight.

Contrast is what makes lenses 3D, the difference between shadow and highlights, how continuous tones are rendered is more important for this than how much resolution a lens has which is important mainly for defining edges.

Pentax (and others) went a step further and made 'soft focus' lenses (never popular and as rare as hen's teeth to find) which deliberately sacrificed even more resolution to get even finer graduation in tones, they rendered tones more accurately, more subtly. A weird combination of sharp and soft, difficult to describe, has to be seen. Your Lensbabies have gone down this same path to some degree.

Finer resolution tends to render tones more 'blocky' more 'posterised' for the most part. Of course Zeiss lenses have contrast, all lenses do, but it's far less subtle and not as wide a variation as the Japanese lenses. It's generally agreed that Japanese lenses have a greater contrast range than German lenses.

You notice in my descriptions how there are few definitive terms, many are in inverted commas, it's all comparative. Unfortunately lens test only look at the absolutes, things that can be measured, I now take these lens reviews with a pinch of salt, they are accurate for what they are, but they don't tell you the whole story, they often throw the baby out with the bath water (if you see what I mean). Most of their parameters can't measure other aspects which are every bit as important to how a lens performs.

It's not an assertion Frogfish, it's a generalisation. For me most of the German type lenses look too, for the want of a better word 'clinical', sometimes that's exactly what you want, but not always, at other times you want a more 'dreamy, misty' look with morning mist and very diffused light for instance. Sometimes 'tack sharp' is not what you want.

It's horses for courses, there is no right and wrong here, all I'm saying is they are different, not better or worse.

What makes one lens 'better' than another is something that has absorbed me for a long time.

What I've found is that lens design falls into two camps, there are many considerations to take into account when designing lenses and all lens designs are a compromise between conflicting parameters.

The German manufacturers, with their usual Teutonic efficiency, went with what you can measure, mainly resolution, lines per mm.

The Japanese went with a more aesthetic mandate and produce lenses that render better, don't ask me to define 'render' there is no S.I. unit for it LOL.

Most lenses are 'tested' on a flatly lit 2D test chart, so the 'measurbater' lenses win every time, mainly because contrast doesn't enter into it much.

But illuminate a 3D subject with 45° lighting (which is what photography does most of the time) and the aesthetic lenses begin to shine (pun intended) through, higher colour contrast makes them much more 3D than the German lenses. They are much more pleasing to look at and seem to have more 'pop', at least to my eye.

There are other lenses that have performed for me, Yashica (I know they are made in the same factory as Zeiss), but you can get a 'Monday morning' lens, you can also get a 'Friday afternoon just before a Bank Holiday' lens which will make your jaw drop, and they're so cheap second hand (go with those marked MC, multi-coated ones).

Olympus have never made a bad lens.

There isn't a lens made that will perform well in all lighting, lighting matters so much for image quality, some lenses prefer diffused and render all the subtle beauty of the light, some lenses 'sing' when the light is Direct and contrasty. It's very rare that you will find a lens that is totally comfortable with both.

Rest assured that any of the Pentax L series primes are at least on a par with the finest lenses from any manufacturer, and often 'better', whatever constitutes better in this discussion.

I've recently had a chance to test out Samyang lenses, and have been very pleasantly surprised, they do tend to have a little 'production spread', but what I've seen are very good. Good even at wide apertures. Always a good test for a lens.

There are no 'bad' lenses out there anymore, most lenses these days from all manufacturers are designed using Sigma software which even works out all the CNC machine codes for manufacturing too, Sigma have been 'reverse engineering' lenses for years, which is why they developed the software in the first place which is very good at determining the best compromise in design, and it shows in their lenses.

Camera to subject light doesn't diminish, only light from the light source to the subject diminishes with distance.

You might be interested in this article I wrote for our club

http://www.westfield-photo.org/resizing%20for%20print.html

You can print larger than you think. I have had images 10ft X 6ft on the side of buses from a 10Mp camera using the method in the link above.

The correct base exposure for the Moon, with clear skies is 1/125th of a second at f8 at 100 ISO, it always is, even a crescent Moon is the same if you don't want to burn out the illuminated crescent. The light reflected off the Moon is a constant, it doesn't vary. Even if the Moon is only a small part of the image, if you want the Moon correctly exposed, the above base settings are what you need.

By base exposure I mean that if you alter one parameter you have to alter one of the other two by the same amount in the opposite direction to keep the balance. For instance my Pentax Q has a lowest ISO of 125 so I would need to compensate by altering one of the other two,in this case 1/100th of a second at f8 at 125 ISO keeps the balance.

To fill your viewfinder with the Moon you need a lens with a focal length of over 2000mm (35mm format) or equivalent.

The small sensor on the Pentax Q is great for this as a 300mm lens gives me a 1650mm lens, this is the result



Moon_Small_01 by screwdriver1, on Flickr

The Moon moves it's own diameter every 5 minutes, so is constantly slowly moving in your viewfinder.

You can see this movement in this video (same setup, Pentax Q with a 300mm lens)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris-judge/8407612281/

The Q has the ability to change the lens which is a huge advantage compared to the RX100 fixed wide range zoom lens. All lenses have compromises in their design, none more so than wide range zooms, which will probably cancel out any advantage of the larger sensor.

20Mp resolution means you can print bigger with less interpolation, that's the only advantage, noise and smaller dynamic range will be sacrificed, though Sony are doing undreamt of things with sensors these days as in the Pentax Q. Print smaller than A3 (the largest print size for a 12Mp sensor,as in the Q, without interpolation)and the advantage of lots of Mp is lost, they are just dumped by the printer driver as they are not needed at standard printer resolutions.

When using manual lenses with an adapter you get a magnified view by pressing the OK button, just turning the focus ring won't work in this situation as the lens is not 'talking' to the camera.