DA* 60-250mm Lens and Full-frame

By PF Staff in Articles and Tips on Feb 16, 2013

From time to time the question comes up if the SMC Pentax-DA* 60-250mm zoom is a full-frame lens.  As the likelihood of a Pentax full-frame digital camera seems to be increasing based on recent buzz, we though we'd do a test!  

This particular zoom is an excellent lens on APS-C, and it is one of our favorites. Your tireless PentaxForums staff just shot a series of photos using the MZ-S film camera and, while the lens was easy enough to use in Tv mode (since it lacks an aperture ring it cannot be used in Av mode on the MZ-S), the resulting images left something to be desired in the corners.

Our developer didn't do the best of jobs with the film itself, but that doesn't matter for the purpose of testing the coverage of the lens. We don't aim at winning any prizes with these images!

So here are the results: the images shot at 60mm are perfectly usable, but when you zoom in you lose coverage.

For the 60mm shots we focused on the cactus in the left hand side to test edge sharpness (which is fine). The 135mm and 260mm shots were focused on the distant palm tree.

	F4	F8
60mm
135mm
250mm

Click the thumbnails to browse larger versions.

The DA* 60-250 covers more that APS-C, but not the entire 24 x 36mm frame.  Stay tuned for an in-depth review of this lens!