Originally posted by jfdavis58 Ray,
I invite you and others to actually open your mind and ....
Google this set of terms: "front or back focus auto focus".
Read carefully THE TEXT FOUND IN several of the top-most search results. Notice exactly what the 'testing' is designed to show
HINT: IT AIN'T FRONT OR BACK FOCUS!!!
Your childish ranting aside:
HINT: almost 100 real world images taken in the same room I have been taking Christmas eve photos for almost 30 years (using many different cameras during that time, all Pentax, film and digital) were all unacceptably soft with the K10D. This prompted more testing on my part.
Images from 2005 in the same exact lighting, using the same lens (the 16-45) on my DS are all properly focused and sharp. Hmmmmmm....
Every lens I own focuses towards the front on this body on the test chart, and strangely enough they do not do so on my other 3 Pentax DSLR's. Perhaps you can capitalize and bold some words that explain that?
Properly set up, the focus chart will fairly accurately tell you the depth of field of a given lens at a given distance and aperture, and it is set up very similar to expensive depth of field wedges designed and sold for the same purpose.
Pay attention now: if you carefully autofocus the camera on the center stripe and the 2mm stripe to the rear is out of focus and the main stripe is barely in focus while the 14mm mark in the front is just out of focus, something is wrong as the camera did not focus on the stripe it was pointed at. It does this consistently, with every lens I tested it with, and at every one of the focus points in the camera. The depth of field would be the same either way, all else being equal. That does not mean that the camera focused where you pointed it.
When you carefully manually focus the same lens for the sharpest image of the center stripe you can achieve, set at the same aperture, on the same body, and the depth of field is almost exactly equal front and rear, then it is quite obvious that the AF system did not adjust the lens to stop at the proper focus point when autofocusing in the earlier test (it was obvious before as the chosen focus point was clearly not real sharp just as my images were not).
If I carefully place the cross-hairs on my scoped .300 Remington Ultra mag at a the center of a target 200 yards away and the projectile hits the dirt 5 yards in front of the target, it likely needs re-zeroing. Seems pretty obvious.
Regardless of all of this measurbation, the camera only produced 3 or 4 reasonably sharp images of people, not charts, while mainly using flash, out of nearly 100. Perhaps you can bold some more words that will explain this as well?
My K100D autofocuses perfectly on the center stripe and delivers equal depth of field front and back with the same setup. Perhaps you can bold some words and explain that as well?
I have been a Pentax user since 1977, and I have never had even one failure of any kind with any of my cameras going back to the screw mount days and including my 645 gear (well, I had to have one 645 fixed once, but I bought it a bit used and abused), so it is not like I am looking to bash Pentax or do not know what a sharp well focused image looks like.
I currently own:
2 *istds bodies, 1 K100D, 1 K10D, 2 MZ-s bodies, 1 ZX-L body, 1 Pz-1 body, and I had the MZ-5N for a while. I have shot tens of thousands of images with these bodies over the years.
Pentax does not have the best AF system on earth, but I have never had almost everything I shot in a given period look as soft and poorly focused as these did and the comparison tests between bodies explained why.
What I fail to understand is why some cannot accept the fact that there might be a problem with a piece of equipment, either by design, or through less than adequate testing and quality assurance.
Maybe you could go to DPReview and do a search in the various forums on AF errors and problems. Pentax is hardly alone in this sort of problem, but at least my body is consistent, so adjustment should be possible if Pentax can reproduce the error on the bench.
I'll be happy to post the results after the camera is returned.
Ray