diggles, I want to thank you for doing this and for publishing your results. You saved me a lot of money. I am (was) in exactly the same boat as you. In fact, today I posted a request on the forum asking for exactly what you'd already done.
35mm favour - PentaxForums.com Somehow I missed your work. Richard L. immediately pointed me to this thread, where all my questions were answered.
So here's my take on this: I am not buying a D FA 35/3.5!
I downloaded all the PEF files you supplied, loaded them into Lightroom, and then did a side-by-side with the compare tool. Interestingly, I had things setup so I didn't know what file was what (so it was a blind test). One of the files was noticeably better than the other in almost every respect. I assumed it was the D FA, but in fact it was the A. This held true across the two comparison scenes that you provided. Based on what I'd read about the D FA, I was certain going into this that it would be a lot stronger than the old A.
One should always be careful in making judgements about a lens based on one copy of a len and one test scene. Also, this test is only using the central part of the image circle, so it doesn't offer any insights into how the lenses do when shifted (which is how I use Pentax 645 lenses). Nonetheless, given how expensive the D FA is, and given that I already have a really good A and can't use the autofocus capability of the D FA, it seems pointless for me to buy a D FA and do my own testing. Thanks for saving me the time and money.