Originally posted by The Kurly One I was certain that I was after the 50-135, but its a range of 85 mm to 130mm, thats a 55mm difference in zoom range.
What I am trying to convince myself of is that the optical qualities of the DA* will outweigh the difference in reach that the 70-200mm gives.
But are the differences noticeable to the average user? I have no plans of turning pro or even a profit with my pics, I just want to attain the most for my money.
What should I do?! I want the lens more for my daughters ballet recital and at f/2.8 I can shoot at 1/250 at 800 ISO at this venue. With cropping for individual shots still be usable even if I have to do a 100% crop with the 50-135?
And I figure that the 50mm side of it will be kind of usable indoors still....
Argghhh, wish I could just get both but thats not in the cards right now!
The other thing is what do I do lens wise if I want to get a longer zoom, as far as I can tell there are no 135-250mm f 2.8 lenses?
The next thread I start will be in the wanted thread!!!!
I will look at this from a logical point of view.
Lets start by defining what you want to do with the lens, and also what you already have, or plan to purchase.
Basically, we are discussing lens kit design.
My own opinion is that a good all round kit should have 3-4 good zooms ranging from a low of 10-12 mm through 135-200mm, with the majority of this at F2.8.
How you fill this depends upon what you are shooting, and the working distances.
For me, I have a sigma 10-20, a pentax FA-J 18-35 (gap filler) a tamron 28-75F2.8 and a sigma 70-200F2.8.
What I like about this is that for city travel, I am limited to shorter focal lengths and I drop the 70-200 out of the kit. saves a ton (kilo actually), I can also drop the 18-35 and live with the gap between 20 and 28mm.
The pros of this kit are the flexibility, and ability to go light in an urban environment, the con's are I can get caught short 75mm is not very long.
others may opt for (lets assume all pentax) 12-24, 16-50F2.8 and 50-135 F2.8.
the pros of this are, better coverage with the 16-50, no gaps, but the cons are
you can't drop the 50-135 in the city as 50mm is just no where near long enough.
also it would be nice not to have to change lenses too often so ideally something topping out at 75mm would be better. The other big disadvantage of this system is it does not go long enough, and you can't add a TC that provides full functionality, No one makes an SDM TC for pentax.
So now lets go back to what you shoot.
Remember Image size = subject size x focal length / distance. Does 135 get you close enough? only you can answer this.