I have had the 35mm LTD for about a year and While it has gotten me many great shot of my 1 year old girl I have been suspecting it for not performing at its best.
So today I tried to compare it to mit kit lens. I compared the kit linse wide open at f4.5 to the ltd at f4. The subject is a news papers on the wall and the camera mounted on tripod at a distance so the news paper filled the FOV. I took extra cared to align the sensor plane and the news paper and used contrast focus in LV. No processing is done to the picture
I have Attached a 1:1 of the extreme upper right corner and lower left corner. The "Candidate" is 35mm ltd and the "select" is the kid at 35mm f4.5
My own observations are: The CA's are much more pronounced on the ltd and the contras is lower.
The opposite observation is done for the lower part of the picture e.g. the lower left corner (also attached)
This lead me to think the focal plane of the LTD is misaligned.
Could the performance of the 35mm ltd be improved by sending it in to a authorized pentax dealer for repair? I bought it from srsmicrosystems (uk)