After all the testing for the past 2 days I was finally getting fed up and had almost penned the entire story down (as statedbelow) when I finally made up my mind to upgrade the firmware on the new K5. After that things started falling into place. I figured the lens was front focussing and after substantial testing had to dial a compensation of -10 to get it as close to the sharpness available using LV autofocus. Here is a picture taken during the the three evenings of breaking my head with this. Still to be tested in daylight. The Firmware update has been a lifesaver though.
Level of frustration before the Firmware update on K5
As mentioned before, I received my copy, the evening of the day before. So far I have only had time to test it in my hotel room in the evenings in Tungsten light. I have not had a chance to test it in daylight but I am not too hopeful.
Shooting Wide Open, the lens seems to be front focussing substantially or not sure if it is just soft. As I increase the F number, the focus is accurate and the images are farily sharp.
However, there have been instances where the focus at f2.8 was still fine.
So I am not sure if it is the lens or the new K5 I upgraded to from K200 about 15 days back. I am still on FW101 on the K5, so not sure of the tungsten light is playing the tricks.
I always shoot with user selectable auto focus point and all the below shots were taken using the center focus point.
So far I have not seen these issues with my 18-250mm lens but considering it is only 3.5 at 18mm end and just goes up from there, not sure if it is a good comparision. Although I think that at the long end, I do see soft images with the K5.
The other lens is the 35mm f2.4, but I haven't used it much so far on the new K5. I did seem to notice some softness in the images at f2.4 but did not look like focussing issues. I will certainly need to check if the K5 is at fault.
I will be more than happy if these are user issues but hopefully my pics on
Flickr and
Pentax Photo Gallery and
my facebook page are testament to the fact that some of these might not be user issues.
Below are the pictures for your expert advise. SOS!
PS: I was able to use LiveView to focus (guess the lens has the updated formware?) and it hit spot even at f2.8 with no focussing issues.