[Kombisaurus]

Thanks for the encouragement ST,

Yeah I think you're right about needing to get used to it.

Another thing I realised last night was that zoome to 200mm and focused close, f/4 gives hardly any depth of field. I took some photos of my cat and got knife-sharp focus on its nose, but its mouth and eyes (which were probably about 1cm "deeper") were beginning to get soft. I think it might have focused on the cat's whiskers which protrude slightly in front of its nose, but nonetheless I was amazed at such a shallow DOF at f/4. Its what I'd expect from f/2 or something. I'm so used to my Oly P&S where small sensors give big DOF and I can take shots at f/2.8 all day and still be annoyed at the background being too sharp.

So, that might be part of the cause of some of my soft images the other day. I was using f/4 a lot fully zoomed as the light was failing and I wanted to keep shutter speeds fast without cranking up the ISO. Its also inconvenient to accurately and quickly check the sharpness in-camera, so it wasn't until I got home that I could see that a number of images weren't what I was hoping for.

As you say, I think I just need to get used to it, and "un-learn" some of my P&S habits.

Cheers
Adrian