Originally posted by brofkand I have a bit of a conundrum. I've had my K-5 for a few weeks now and have been absolutely loving it. It's what my K-7 was, plus much more. I have no regrets on buying the body. It came with the 18-55, which for what it is, it's a good lens. I had one with my K-7 as well.
However, I am having regrets on the lenses I bought. I thought I would get a few fast primes and all would be well. I'd have a lighter camera bag, and have more options; I could shoot in low light more easily. It turns out having a few rigid primes are being a bit more cumbersome to me.
I bought the 50 1.4, the 35 2.4, and the Vivitar 85 1.4 to go with my K-5 when I ordered it. The Vivitar, although cheap, is a good lens in terms of IQ, takes some time to get perfect focus. It's a very sharp lens, and I love the focal length. The lack of AF keeps me from pulling it out of my bag most of the time, though. I need more practice (and perhaps new glasses), but the AF indicator isn't accurate and I am having problems getting sharp photos at 1.4.
The 50 1.4 is a very good lens, I love it a lot. Image quality is fantastic, and coupled with the K-5 I can almost see in the dark.
The 35 2.4 is probably the one I thought I'd use the most, but it's stayed in my bag more than the other 2. It's build quality isn't very confidence inspiring to say the least.
I am honestly thinking about returning all the lenses to B&H and getting the 16-50. The prime advantage was something I thought I wanted, but I like being able to have one lens that carries all the focal lengths I need most often. When I shot film with my Canon A2, I had the Tamron 28-75 2.8 and never really needed anything else.
What are your thoughts?
I looked it for the poll, and have had my 16-50 since August 2007. Lots of folks who never owned one claim it is a troubled lens but I've been happy with mine. I own both some primes and the 16-50 and I normally use the 16-50, but I guarantee you that unless they are asleep there
will be 3 folks at least bad mouthing it within 10 minutes of this post. I have also carried pentaxes around for 40 years.
the other thing that I can tell you is that personal preferences for lenses has not stayed constant over the 40 years. You need to find your style.
and some times it changes. The focusing screen that is in the K7 isn't optimized for manual focus which makes it hard to use for manual focus.
I've bought, but not gotten around to install a Katz eye screen that has a split image in it making focusing easy like it used to be with the old
manual focus cameras---if there was enough light so it didn't black out.
Unless budget issues have you pressed real hard against the wall, I'd keep the lenses you have and ADD the 16-50 to my collection.
There is no right answer, but there are times for primes and times for zooms. One of those times for primes is when you use the built
in Flash, and at some focal lengths its snout gets in the way of the flash. If you never use the built in flash, it's not an issue.
similarly haveing the 16-50 won't replace the 85, an more than your 50mm prime replaces the 85.
Also you miss a whole lot of the world if you don't play around with macro stuff. You don't have to go buy a macro lense to play in the macro sand box.--- you can do it with a set of extension tubes and the any of the primes you have.