I'm planning on buying a Pentax K-30 soon.
To give you some context, I currently own an Olympus E-500 and have 3 lenses: 14-45mm, 40-150mm and a 50mm prime macro. Keep in mind that the crop factor on Olympus is 2.0
One of the problems with the 4/3 system is there are few affordable lenses.
On the other hand, one of the nice things about the 4/3 system is that there are few affordable lenses.
When there are so few choices, you don't think too much about which lenses to buy.
Now that I'm buying a Pentax K-30, I'd like to somewhat cover the range and quality of the Olympus lenses I currently have (with comparable price). There are just too many lenses to pick from (including third party lenses). I need help narrowing the list down so that I can look at the reviews in detail and pick the lenses.
At the moment I'm not even clear about whether to get a kit lens vs body only, and if I do then which one?
Some constraints:
- I'd like to cover at least the same range as what I have in Olympus in terms of 35mm equivalents - so at least 28mm-300mm (19mm-200mm in terms of the Pentax crop factor).
- I probably used my 14-45mm (19mm-60mm in Pentax terms) much more than the other one, so a bit more weight at that range.
- The range is a guideline. Going beyond wouldn't hurt as long as the quality is good and I can afford it!
- The 50mm (66.7mm in terms of Pentax) Olympus macro prime f/2.0 is a fantastic lens. I really wonder if I can find a comparable lens in the Pentax ecosystem for a comparable price. It has awesome bokeh as well. More generally, I want 1) a good macro lens 2) That has at least an f/2.0 aperture. I'm actually not married to the focal length. An option is also to get two prime lenses if I can afford it. My desire to get both a wide and a macro is that for macro shots you often don't have much light (especially at higher focal lengths). However note that I'm coming from a camera with an unbelievably crappy high ISO performance, so if you think I'm overcompensating, let me know!
- No idea about whether I should care for WR? Obviously more expensive, so that's a limiting factor.
- Any thoughts on which kit lens?
- Unrelated to all of this, any suggestions for cheap legacy lenses? By cheap I mean $100 or below. I'll consider more expensive (up to $300) legacy lens only if they're REALLY good (and perhaps in lieu of the lenses I mentioned above).
- Wish I had a clear idea for the budget. Say roughly $400-500 for something that's as good as my Olympus 50mm prime macro. And at most another $300-500 for the rest of the range (closer to $300 but I'm willing to go up to $500 if it really does seem to be a fantastic lens). So a total of $800-1000 regardless of how it is partitioned among various lenses.
Thanks! I'm about to browse a few other threads now, so apologies if this is answered a lot. I just wanted to get my thoughts down ASAP. Feel free to point me to other threads if they address any of the above.
And keep in mind: The goal is to narrow my list down so that I can do a detailed look at each lens you suggest. I don't want to read the reviews of more than 10-15 lenses!