They are not the same image so comparing the BW with the colour is more than just looking at the conversion. Having said that, I think the BW has more impact but not just because it is in BW, but also because the composition is stronger.

Best wishes, Kris.

The lack of sense of scale was quite deliberate!

K.

Thank you Father Ted and HG. It needs a frame and I wonder about a perfect square crop too so it looks more like a 6x6 photo.

K.

I'll look into it but I suspect that it will cost more than picking up a replacement on fleabay... Just as well it wasn't my DA*50-135 or the 43mm Ltd.

K.

I went out for a walk this afternoon and decided for a change I would take my ME-F with MEII powerwinder, and my SMC-A 28mm, SMC-K 55 and 135mm and my SMC-M 200mm. Sadly, I tried to change lenses whilst walking, talking and admiring the view. The 200mm lens is no more. I dropped it on the tarmac and although it focuses OK, the aperture is jammed and the filter ring has a dent in it. B@@@@r.

Oh well. K.

PS This seems a little over priced!

You and the rest of us! The basics are not too bad, the subtleties endless.

... and a rather lovely one if heavy. No idea why the auto-white balance was quite so different though and makes me realise I'll need to be more proactive with WB when using that lens. Shame I didn't have my SMC Takumar 135mm with me too.

When I was out walking the other day I spotted this nice stately home (Markyate Cell, supposedly the home of the "Wicked Lady", a notorious highwaywoman...). I thought it would be fun to compare shots taken with the three lenses I had with me capable of 135mm: the DA* 50-135mm, the Tamron 70-300mm (aka the purple fringe monster) and the SMC-K 135mm f/2.5. ISO was set to 200 ASA, aperture at f/8, white balance on auto. All were handheld. Now I know this is unscientific, and I should have taken shots at a variety of apertures and so on but my bus was due so please take this as a bit of fun and not a real scientific test. I was curious to see how a £460 lens (the DA*) compared to a £40 lens (the Tamron) and a £60 something lens (the K).

All the images were uploaded as RAW files to Lightroom. The DA* and the Tamron both had a white balance of 5100/-8 but the K had 4250/+14. Changing the K to the same as the other two lenses improved the look of the image a great deal, as you can see below. I don't know why auto WB on the K10D was so different from the other two lenses and could explain why I haven't always been happy with the results from the K.

The only other edit was to up the sharpening a little bit, and to produce the so-called "100% crops". All images were converted to jpgs using Lightoom's export function, for the full-size images reducing to 800 pixels on the long edge, for the crops at full size.

Comparing sharpness is a bit of a problem here as (a) they are handheld and (b) the first two lenses are AF, the last manual, although all should have been on infinity.

The images were then posted to flickr for inclusion here, and the full-size images used so that should mean no flickr-induced problems (I hope).

As I say, this is all bad science, but interesting nevertheless. Personally, I feel the K f/2.5 comes out of this with flying colours although why the K10D messes up the white balance is a mystery to me.

Best wishes, Kris.

DA* 50-135mm @ 135mm, full image:



so-called 100% crop:



Tamron 70-300mm @ 133mm, full image:



so-called 100% crop



SMC "K" 135mm, f/2.5 @ f/8, full image, white balance as for other photos:



SMC "K" 135mm, f/2.5 @ f/8, full image, white balance as set by K10D:



As penultimate image, 100% crop: