[Maxashh]

Hi Pentax people,

Im not sure if my camera has a problem or not but i am hoping someone might be able to give me some advice or perhaps tell me if i am doing something wrong in regards to my photography.

I have owned my camera for only a short time now and have been enjoying taking photos of friends and family with it. I purchased the camera with a 18-135mm lens and just recently got myself a DA 35mm f2.4 to take some better shots indoors. So far i have been taking really good photos and have not noticed any problems other than noise with an ISO setting higher than 1600 but i guess that is expected of any camera.

However just now i was sitting in my room taking pictures of my foot with the 35mm and playing with the settings a bit to better learn the camera amd just muck around. Because its night time i put the flash on and dropped the iso down to 80 and was going through different apertures to see if the quality changes from wide open through the range. In doing so i discovered that only every 3 or 4th shot were giving really crisp images. I thought perhaps it could be me not having a steady hand so i cranked the shutter speed up to 1/180 but still was getting really blurry images. Then i put the camera into manual focus and discovered that when focusing manually i was getting better results. Finally i put the camera back into auto focus and realised that when i focus on something slightly in front (say 4cm) it was giving really crisp images again. Tried with both lenses and got the same results.

Is there something wrong with my camera? I cant say i have noticed anything like this during the day so could it be related to the flash possibly? I will experiment further tomorrow but before i went to bed now i though i would put the question forth to people with more experience hoping i can get an answer and possible fix this thing if there is a problem.

Thanks,
Max

[Saxplayer1004]

It may likely just be a close focus issue. There are articles on here about how to adjust the focus of your lenses and make sure they're accurate with a tripod and a ruler or test paper. May be worth testing both lenses and adjusting as needed

[mike.hiran]

and it may be the type of light when you were shooting inside. I've heard some say that front/ back focus is more pronounced under artificial light... so do the tests in both natural and artificial light.

[Vasyl]

Hi Max,
Could you add some pictures with the "issue" let's say in auto mode and in manual.

[Maxashh]

Thanks for the replies guys. Its morning here and i did some more testing under good natural lighting conditions and the problem didnt exist anymore. Unfortunately i dont own a tripod so i took the photos handheld with the shutter speed on 1/200 and i was getting really sharp photos. To be honest it was focusing so well on a point (down to the milimeter!) that i couldnt manual focus that accurately even if i spent 10 minutes trying.
I would post some photos to show you what was happening last night but they are mostly of my big toe which is a bit embarrassing. It appears the problem was the lighting conditions in my room as suggested. It was a bed side table light next to me so when the picture was taken the light source was behind the camera, albeit quite weak.
What puzzles me though is it would pick up the focus really quickly and didnt need to hunt around much for it with both lenses. I then discovered it was just a few cm off (focusing on something slightly in front was the trick) but with the 35mm lens that makes the object in focus quite blurry.
Does anyone else have an issue like this and is it common? Is there any way to correct or calibrate the camera for focus in low light? Because the focus is so good in natural light i am hesitant to do this. Its not the end of the world but i hope it doesnt impact photos i take in low light conditions of family etc.
Thanks,
Max