The aperture has 18 blades... it's a beaut...
The focus travel from close focus to infinity is about 355° which really allows for precise though not fast focusing. The closest focus distance marked on the ring is 18ft/5.5m, but the ring stops slightly past that for probably about 15ft minimum focus distance.
Today I had a chance to take a few sample shots on a tripod... Nothing interesting photographically here, strictly putting the lens through it's paces on a digital body (K20D). For these shots, the lens was tripod mounted and the camera two second timer was on (so SR was off). Initial metering was with the green button, and then manually adjusted for most shots. I shot a frame at f/4, f/5.6, and f/8 for each scene. Photos were captured as RAW files and converted in Lr with no changes (other than one set where auto exposure was applied to balance the exposure across the three shots).
I'll post the wide open shot, followed by 100% crops for comparison, all the originals are available for download in this gallery (up to full size - huge).
General findings: Wide open the lens tends to be somewhat soft, and display quite a bit of CA. Sharpness and CA both improve with one stop, and by f/8, IQ has increased significantly.
click pics below to see the larger version...
f/4
f/5.6
f/8
100% crops...
f/4
f/5.6
f/8
100% crops...
another from the broad side of the barn... (out of order - bad photoshoping - f/8 is the middle shot)
