Keep in mind, pentaxforums compresses the images further making them look less sharp.
I've been shooting with a tripod so far, 2s mirror lockup. This time I also used a cable switch and cleaned the 18-55 II. I did a lot of shooting.
Here's the set up: manual focus, manual exposure (0.5s shutter speed, F5.6, ISO100), reported (in EXIF) focal lengths 50mm for the 18-55 II and 53mm for 17-70. No flash this time. I set the white balance separately for each lens with inkjet photo paper as my white card. PEF->PNG->cropped JPG.
I attached
cropped but not scaled images for pixel peepers. The word "miracles" is near the center of the original image. The book is Robert Park's "Voodoo Science" which I thought would be appropriate for this activity.
Conclusion: 18-55 II seems much softer in this spot of the DOF. You can actually see jaggies with the 17-70.
Originally Posted by Ivan Glisin 
With K200D, at 1m camera-to-subject distance, 50mm setting and f/5.6 depth of field is only -4.12cm/+4.49cm (in front of/behind the subject). So you have total DOF of only about 9.5cm, and very minor shift in focal length may affect the image.
In contrast, with identical settings at 5m camera-to-subject distance DOF will increase to -91.5cm/+144.3cm, giving you over 2m of total DOF!
WB on flash and flash use for this type of tests works the best. Tripod may be of great help as well.