Larry Colen wrote: >I was thinking about my quest for sharpness, and was considering trying >to do some research into what the aperture "sweet spot" is for each lens, >and was wondering if anyone had already made a chart of them.
The sweet spot for sharpness is usually around f/5.6-f/8, depending on the lens. Of course, depending on the lens and the composition of your photo you might need more depth of field than the optimum aperture yields, so sharpness and DOF is usually a compromise. (Also, sharpness and shutter speed can be a trade-off too if you're trying to get motion blur from long shutter speed. I run into this problem when shooting waterfalls and such and I'm forced to stop way down to f/22 - another reason I'm wishing for a DSLR with *lower* ISO settings.) With a Pentax camera and a Pentax lens it's easy to find the sharpest aperture: Just set the camera's Program exposure line into "MTF" mode and use Program auto exposure: the camera will read the MTF data that's written into the chip in the lens and set the aperture to the optimum value for that lens. I don't know of any other camera maker that offers this feature. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
