Pål Jensen asked what I meant by my way of describing the FA*400/5.6 Pål, my only true point of reference is the M-400/5.6, and it is certainly better than that in all respects but handling. On the optical side I don't know if my comments are worth anything to you, but IMO, the FA*400 is good enough for shooting animals at wide open, but (still only my experience) that resolution improves at f/8 and f/9.5. I haven't stopped it down further for this purpose. However, I have used it for landscape details, and afa I can see, the results are good. I recently sold a 50x60 cm Ilfochrome enlargement from a slide taken with this lens at f/32, and the image still looked good blown up. The motif was a single birch in a large field some place in Vestfold. It needed real resolution power to resolve the details in the canopy and crops. The handling is really nice in AF, but the focus collar is too wide for easy handling in MF. It occupies almost half the length of the lens. There's no good way to balance the camera and lens in your hands without chancing to turn the lens out of focus. And a touch is enough, even though (IMO) the MF is _reasonably_ well damped. You can of course compensate much by putting the thing on a monopod or tripod. Jostein - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
