Originally posted by ramair455 I have a 28 that has beautiful bokeh....
Maybe I was too hard on the bokeh... I think the bokeh is great for a wide angle. However it does not blur nearly as much as a 50mm, simply due to the focal length. While I'm still not sure what is bothering him so much, I still think that he is noticing the benefit of a longer focal length w.r.t subject/background seperation, which is much more challenging to do with a wide angle lens.
I still think, in many ways, that the "problems" he is noticing with the DA 21mm is simply what you get with a wide angle lens, which is why it is good to own both. There are certainly many pictures I can think of that are just impossible to capture with a 50mm, and the 21 is the perfect compliment to that (IMHO).
Now he is talking about gamma... where I would start to wonder if he should look at the "camera calibration" section of lightroom. The camera you have will adjust settings for the DA 21, but won't for the A 50 because there is no chip inside that lens. Therefore, you might simply prefer the default camera calibration over the optimized one for the DA 21?