I forgot to mention that negative sharpening (softening) is like the 'blur' in Photoshop. And this is applied throughout the frame.

If your shot already has flaring due to the lens (light leaking from the bright areas to the dark areas, this is due to the lens optics), the softening will make it worse.

We MX users can be thankful that the Leica lens is actually very good against flaring. I find the so-called 'Carl-Zeiss' on Sony cams to be pretty bad at this. If I am not wrong, the Sony gem VX2000 is using generic lens, not CZ, which saved the cam from flares!

Lens flare was the main reason I went from a Sony TRV900 to the MX300. The TRV900 had very bad flare, at least on my sample although I heard that someone had two '900s and one was OK...

BUT the Panasonics seem far more prone to another type of flare - the ccd overload type that occurs when you shoot bright 'spot' light - a vertical streak all the way down the picture occurs - the Sony ccd's seems far less prone to this problem.
Swings & roundabouts I guess...

Dead right Angry of M! I had two TRV900s and they were both fine, but I've seen many other 900s with terrible (and famous) "green flare" that sort of swamps the entire picture sometimes. Nasty.

I then bought aa Panasonic MX300 and although it didn't give the overall flare the CCDs were much more prone to the overload streaking that puts a thick vertical white line through any bare bulb on screen. Again, nasty.

Then I bought a VX2000. Ahhhh, sigh of relief. Very little flare, no overlaod streaks and not a silly Leica or Zeiss name in sight.

tom.

>and not a silly Leica or Zeiss name in sight.<

Good one, Tom. What a lot of people don't realize is that Leica, Zeiss, Nikon, Minolta, the older Yashica lenses, etc, etc, all made good lenses and not so good lenses---a few were great and few were "dogs." And then, even though the same lens, there were always bad ones made here and there. Thank God for all those lens test sites out there for SLRs.

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