Sorry for the edit whilst you were posting John, this little camera never ceases to amaze me. Normally putting the images through Photomatix really emphasises any noise, the Q seems to have very little.

The Q's ability to rapidly take 3 bracketed shots (takes a time to save them, but it takes the images very quickly) makes it ideal for HDR

Shooting digital is a little like shooting fast reversal film, there's not a lot of headroom in the exposure, a 1/3rd of stop can make a visible difference to the amount of data collected.

Maximising image quality with digital has as much, if not more, to do with the the A/D converter and bit depth as it has with sensor dynamic range.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/optimizing_exposure.shtml

Re-mapping Raw files in the Raw Converter may correct for an incorrect exposure, but it will not give you back any lost data caused by incorrect exposure, in extreme cases it will just give you a posterised image, blocks of colour with little detail.

Metering from the camera position is always prone to error no matter which metering mode you use which is why there is an easily accessible EV compensation control on most cameras.

All meters see the World in B&W, they measure the Luminance, but metering from the camera position make no allowance for the tone of the subject, how reflective they are.

All they do is take an average of the metered zone (zonal, spot or centre weighted)and then set the exposure to make that Luminance level reflected off the subject a mid grey, in film days mid grey was referred to as 18% grey as film responds to light in a logarithmic way, digital sensors are linear so mid grey should really be referred to as 50% grey, but the old 18% grey term seems to have stuck.

It's easy to show this happening with a piece of white and a piece of black card, place them in a well, evenly lit area and fill the frame with the white card and take a picture then take another picture of the black using any auto mode (Program, Aperture Priority, or Shutter Priority) both exposures will be the same - mid grey.

This gives us the old problem with scenes that are predominantly light or dark toned, snow scenes tend to be under-exposed to give us a mid grey snow, and the ubiquitous black cat on coal will be over-exposed and give a grey cat on grey coal, hence the need for EV compensation.

The magnifications greater than that, that's a Clanger with bad Acne

Here (at last) are the Moon shots, first clear(ish) night for weeks. First the 1500mm scope.




Using my slightly more manageable 650mm scope

The light loss you get with the different viewing angles of the various focal lengths is taken care of by f numbers. The light loss you get from extension tubes is because your magnifying the view and only getting the light reflected off a smaller area, doesn't apply when your just adapting a lens so it can focus on infinity.

I used centre weighted metering in my tests, but I've also used spot metering with the same results, it definitely seems that some cameras can select a faster shutter speed when in aperture priority and the aperture and ISO is the same on all cameras, the same field of view, the same position for the camera.

oops - sorry

Regarding the manual focus problems if you get a K-01 then you get focus peaking and manual focus is a breeze, quick and accurate, and you can see how much DOF you've got and the effect stopping down gives you.

As I understand it ISO is not an absolute, there is no S.I. unit for ISO, shutter speeds and aperture are absolutes and should be the same for all cameras.

Angle of view is the same (same tripod position), all were in centre weighted metering, all were viewing the same frame as near as I could get, the only variable I can see to alter the shutter speed is sensor sensitivity.

Can anybody else do some tests too?