My Pentax K110D DSLR

[mtngal]

Which lenses do you have, and do they have any particular problems? I had an older Kiron zoom that was quite soft (the lens normally is pretty sharp). When I got looking at it, there was oil on the aperture blades, and it was shooting wide open all the time - no wonder it was soft.

I've had reasonable luck with manual focus lenses - both my macro and 300mm lenses are manual, and I occasionally use others, but then I take lots of macros which gave me a better feel for seeing the focus (I found it does take frequent practice and lots of concentrationto be reliable with it).

Soft pictures could be the lens, a slight off-focus issue or a bit of camera shake.Try taking some shots of something fairly simple (easy to focus on)with the camera on a tripod using a 2 sec. delay - that will give you some idea of the capability of the camera and lens. If that's not sharp with one lens but sharp with another lens, then you know it's the lens. If both are soft, then it could be soemthing with thecamera (especially if you know one of the lenses is a good one). If both are sharp but its soft when you are shooting, you might want to upgrade the camera as it could be camera shake and SR would be a big help.

Another thought - are you shooting raw or jpg? I always found the jpg from the Pentax cameras up until the D20 a bit soft for my taste, so I always shot raw and used a little software sharpening - it made a huge difference. I've been shooting raw+ with the K20 and find myself using the jpgs much more at the moment.

[jamesb2007]

I use 3 lenses regularly.. I use the one that came with the camera.. Pentax 18-55mm SMC Pentax DA, a Tamron 28-80mm 1:3.5-5.6 AF Aspherical and it has an aperture ring but my camera says there's no lense attatched when I use it (lol). and I use another Tamron.. It's a LD Di 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 Tele-Macro 1:2 with the same aperture ring issue... I have recently been playing around and taking pictures in RAW format.. I seem to have found an issue with this camera.. The JPG compression seems to soften images ... RAW format and my Photoshop CS3 post processing are giving me a new feeling for this camera!

[bahadir]

jamesb2007 wrote:

... RAW format and my Photoshop CS3 post processing are giving me a new feeling for this camera!

Exploring your ideal settings for certain occasions (Landscape, portrait, etc.) @ CS3 is half the fun...which is followed bya new epoch Ah, at this point,try not toget distracted by consumption motives ...if you can:-)