Originally posted by Driline I'm puzzled then as why Pentax Forums has given the lens such a mediocre review.
There are some people in this thread who would agree with the mediocre reviews. People have different standards.
I find it hard to believe that your 16-50 is as good as an FA 31mm. Certainly the Photozone tests did not find that. I compared a DA*16-50 to my FA 50mm f1.4, both at f/2.8, and there was no contest. My FA 35 is even sharper than my FA 50.
I don't doubt that an f2.8 constant aperture standard zoom is a useful thing in some situations, but I don't believe that it compares to a prime. I think the DA*16-50 should be superseded in the lineup but I still wouldn't buy one, because primes outperform zooms when IQ is more important than convenience.
I'm looking forward to the new DA* extended zoom shown in the roadmap Extended range is a more important feature to me in a zoom than f/2.8 aperture.