In article <26885766wnr@onview.demon.co.uk>, Mike@onview.demon.co.uk says... (..)

>I am regularly called on to take architectural reference shots of
>exhibition stands for some of my clients.
>The first problem is that at the moment I am using a Nikon F401 auto
>focus 35mm with 28-200 lens and the quality leaves a lot to be desired.
>Prints are usually enlarged to no more than 10 x 7 but the sharpness is
>very poor. I assume that this is due to the inaccuracies of the auto
>focus.
>I would therefore like to buy a manual focus camera with full manual
>control over all settings, the question is, which one to go for and is
>it worth moving up to a larger format while I`m at it.
---I would stay with the camera you have, and buy a good lens for it.
---Try the inexpensive Nikkor 50mm f1.8AF, or the 35mm f2AF if you
---need a little wider lens - you should see an improvement in image
---quality. BTW, the F401 can be used manually with AF lenses, and I ---would suggest using an aperture around f8-11, instead of the wide
---aperture that the program mode would probably use.
>The second problem is that I have just purchased and used for the first
>time 3 Cokin filters, a polarising filter, a graduation filter and a
>blue correction filter for correcting from tungsten lighting. However,
>out of 36 prints, only one came out as I would have expected, ie:
>white, all of the others came out with varying degrees of a yellow
>cast. Can anyone explain this. The only possible explanation I could
>come up with was that I had not got the filter perfectly vertical. Does
>this matter?
---I would not use any filter - tungsten corrections can and should be
---made in the printing. If reflections are a problem and moving the ---camera does not solve the problem, use the polarizer (though, if
---it is not a circular polarizer, do not AF or AE through it).
---BTW, holler at the lab if the color balance is not correct - they ---should remake prints until they are close to right.
>All advice gratefully recieved and much appreciated.
>Mike Hughes
---Hope This Helps