[Doundounba]

Fast and wide is probably one of the weakest corners of the Pentax lens landscape. If you have access to a mirrorless body, the new Samyang 12mm F/2 looks very good, and only ~250g...

[Kozlok]

The lens you are asking for does not exits. Fast wide angle lenses are heavy. Small wide angle lenses are slow. This is physics, it is just not possible to have all three. That's why the rule is choose two.

If small is a priority, the DA15 is gorgeous. Also fast aperture is less important in a wide lens. You will not get shallow DOF any way, and you can hand hold the DA15 down to 1/10s if you use good technique. If you want a fast wide, the Samyang 16/f2 is pretty close to the only game there is. The new Sigma 18-35 f1.8 isn't quite as wide, but it is very fast, and very nice (and very huge).

With mirrorless, you can get fast/wide/small because the registration distance is so much less.

[romansolar]

THANKS ALL! for valuable feedback.

what i learned from your feedback is fact that probably it is not needed to have fast prime for indoor shooting, i also agree even with slower aperture i could do concert shooting. Still there are lenses which could not be stopped down to achieve acceptable sharpness. I guess

much appreciate. Again, mostly landscape, but also concert shooting/indoor/festivals

Fast and wide is probably one of the weakest corners of the Pentax lens landscape. If you have access to a mirrorless body, the new Samyang 12mm F/2 looks very good, and only ~250g...

mirrorless body? yes i am shooting with k-01. But you mean different brand? i dont get it. Its same registration distance then any other pentax dslr

The lens you are asking for does not exits. Fast wide angle lenses are heavy. Small wide angle lenses are slow. This is physics, it is just not possible to have all three. That's why the rule is choose two.

If small is a priority, the DA15 is gorgeous. Also fast aperture is less important in a wide lens. You will not get shallow DOF any way, and you can hand hold the DA15 down to 1/10s if you use good technique. If you want a fast wide, the Samyang 16/f2 is pretty close to the only game there is. The new Sigma 18-35 f1.8 isn't quite as wide, but it is very fast, and very nice (and very huge).

With mirrorless, you can get fast/wide/small because the registration distance is so much less.

even wide can produce nice shallow DOF, for example my samyang can produce nice results with manual focus, like portraits or details. Its advantage having usable fast wide like 2.8, but my samyang is HEavy, i guess i am pussy

again, what do you mean with mirrorless body? pentax mirrorless like k-01 have same distance then dslr pentax right?

I will check mentioned lenses by you people, will be back soon

update:

DA 12-24 | expensive for me
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 | thinking but slower one
DA 15mm | expensive but small and great IQ
Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 | good results, fast, price, versatile, but big and not too wide. thinking
Sigma 15mm 2.8 | small,fast,good IQ,hot candidate
FA20-35 | light, good performer, slower, bigger,
SMC Pentax-FA 20mm F2.8 | fast, small, hot candidate but dont know if its wide enough
Zenitar 16mm f2.8 Fisheye | small,fast but dont know if IQ is ok without stopping down
MIR 20mm F3.5 MC | huh??

[Doundounba]

mirrorless body? yes i am shooting with k-01. But you mean different brand? i dont get it. Its same registration distance then any other pentax dslr

Right, I don't mean K-01. The Samyang 12mm F/2 is available for Sony E, Samsung NX, Canon M and Fuji X mounts (plus m4/3, but that's a different crop factor). Some of these bodies are so light that the combo of a body plus the 12mm F/2 will weigh almost the same as the bare K-01 body. It's a bummer that the Samyang 12mm F/2 is not available in k-mount. That's because when the focal length of a lens gets significantly shorter than the mount's registration distance, lens design gets more complex and requires a lot more glass. Fuji X also have other nice fast wides, like an 18mm F/2 pancake. With the sub-$400 price of the X-A1, it makes a very attractive alternative to the K-01, with the addition of a tilting viewscreen (but the loss of IBIS). Been resisting that temptation so far myself, being otherwise very happy with my K-01s. But I don't really have a great need for fast, wide and light. When I shoot (very) wide, I don't usually need super speed, and a Sigma 10-20mm F/3.5-5.6 has me fairly content...

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Last edited by Doundounba; 08-04-2014 at 10:51 AM. Reason: typo

[Kayaker-J]

"Pick two"... Yep, often said and worth repeating; too bad to have to concede. We tend to get spoiled by the real bargains out there these days, not just for photography. No one's mentioned the Tamron 17mm Adaptall-2. It's fairly easy to obtain due to the AD-2 mount system. IQ may, or may not quite, meet your present requirements (factor #3, IQ, might work fine for your preferred subjects -- it's an SP lens, so its era is basically what works against it generically for some). Very compact, even more so in version-2 (see the lens database), it works out to a *very handy* & versatile 26.5mm FF-equivalent. This is because the true FL is closer to 18mm than 17mm.

[Douglas_of_Sweden]

All other mirror-less cameras except the K-01 use the lack of mirror to decrease the registration distance. For the K-01 Pentax instead kept the registration distance (and an empty mirror-box) to make it compatible with all K lenses without adapter. For the Q system, Pentax also went with a short registration distance.

A mirror tilted 45 degrees and large enough to cover a 24x36 film frame (or full frame sensor) will give you a registration distance between 40-50mm, which is why you find all the classical SLRs in that range, including Pentax at 45.46mm. But that also used to mean that they couldn't construct lenses wider than ~40-50mm. Pentax first SLR system...the asahiflexes didn't have any shorter focal lenght than 50mm for this reason. Initially the lack of wide angles was the big drawback of any SLR system.
Rangefinders had both shorter registration distances and could also use lense designes that protruded into that registration distance (since no mirror had to swing back and forth there).

The wide angle problems for SLRs were solved by Pierre Angénieux with the invention of the retrofocus-designs. Basically he inverted a tele-lens design that allowed wide angles by moving the focal plane further back without lenses protruding into the mirror-box. I think Engénieoux's motivation was to make room for the beam-splitting mirror in the technicolor cameras (most of his lens design was for movie cameras, not still cameras), but eventually the design spread into still photo and removed one of the few remaining advantages range-finders had to SLRs. Pentax began making retrofocus designs as well and made (one of?) the first really fast retrofocus designs with the Auto-Takumar 35mm f2.3 in 1959.
In summary, wide angle on a SLR requires a more complex lens design than on a mirror-less camera. And they have gone more complex since Angénieux's work to make them faster, better corrected etc.
Then the mirrorless cameras arrived, like reborn rangefinders from the grave, and again have the advantage of easier and simpler wide angle desings.

With the K-01 Pentax would have had the option to make a wide angle where the back lens elements extended into the empty mirrorbox...but they didn't, probably because the market would have been very small.

It will always be true that it is impossible to get both fast, small and super-wide, but the challenge is even tougher for a SLR than for a mirror-less rangefinder/EVIL.
On the other hand...with todays high iso performance...do you really need that fast wide angles? For landscapes you will certainly close down anyway for a deeper DOF. For stage shooting, my own experience is that you will have a hell of a problem to get the artists within a thin DOF anyway, so you will want to close down a bit at least to make it simpler to catch that wildly jumping rock-artist...

[Kayaker-J]

Nice summary, Douglas!

[BTW, I have recently become a late convert to ABBA superfandom (there's a music thread here) -- some of my snootier audiophile friends may think I've gone soft... What do they know! A better export than SAAB (of course), Volvo, or IKEA? ...Cheers... or Skoal (Skal...? --> Interesting history behind that one, indeed!)]

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Last edited by Kayaker-J; 08-04-2014 at 01:27 PM.

[Douglas_of_Sweden]

It depends on what you mean with SAAB. SAAB trailers and aerospace have been doing well during most of their existance. SAAB cars only made a profit 1 or 2 years...
ABBA is fine, still enjoy some of their music. Did you see the musical they made on their music?
IKEA...presuming you manage to put them together and no pieces are missing they have a lot of good furnitures...only problem I have with them is their founder who was a nazi and even kept contact with the nazi-circles after WW2. The guy also made his best to not pay any tax in Sweden (or elsewhere).
Basically both Volvo and SAAB has made many good cars (and Volvo even made a lot of profit from it), but they were dooned the moment they were sold to big international car companies.

[romansolar]

thanks for great post Douglas. I think i could live with slower lens too. As you mentioned, fast lens, thin DOF = harder to achieve focused catch! i will think about it.

appreciate suggestions

[VoiceOfReason]

THANKS ALL! for valuable feedback.

what i learned from your feedback is fact that probably it is not needed to have fast prime for indoor shooting, i also agree even with slower aperture i could do concert shooting. Still there are lenses which could not be stopped down to achieve acceptable sharpness. I guess

much appreciate. Again, mostly landscape, but also concert shooting/indoor/festivals



mirrorless body? yes i am shooting with k-01. But you mean different brand? i dont get it. Its same registration distance then any other pentax dslr



even wide can produce nice shallow DOF, for example my samyang can produce nice results with manual focus, like portraits or details. Its advantage having usable fast wide like 2.8, but my samyang is HEavy, i guess i am pussy

again, what do you mean with mirrorless body? pentax mirrorless like k-01 have same distance then dslr pentax right?

I will check mentioned lenses by you people, will be back soon

update:

DA 12-24 | expensive for me
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 | thinking but slower one
DA 15mm | expensive but small and great IQ
Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 | good results, fast, price, versatile, but big and not too wide. thinking
Sigma 15mm 2.8 | small,fast,good IQ,hot candidate
FA20-35 | light, good performer, slower, bigger,
SMC Pentax-FA 20mm F2.8 | fast, small, hot candidate but dont know if its wide enough
Zenitar 16mm f2.8 Fisheye | small,fast but dont know if IQ is ok without stopping down
MIR 20mm F3.5 MC | huh??

Based on the ones you're looking at check the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8. It is decently fast, pretty sharp, and smaller than the Sigma 17-50.

[romansolar]

Based on the ones you're looking at check the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8. It is decently fast, pretty sharp, and smaller than the Sigma 17-50.

thanks, will check it

[Kayaker-J]

It depends on what you mean with SAAB. SAAB trailers and aerospace have been doing well during most of their existance. SAAB cars only made a profit 1 or 2 years...
ABBA is fine, still enjoy some of their music. Did you see the musical they made on their music?
IKEA...presuming you manage to put them together and no pieces are missing they have a lot of good furnitures...only problem I have with them is their founder who was a nazi and even kept contact with the nazi-circles after WW2. The guy also made his best to not pay any tax in Sweden (or elsewhere).
Basically both Volvo and SAAB has made many good cars (and Volvo even made a lot of profit from it), but they were dooned the moment they were sold to big international car companies.

I felt rather sad -- make that very sad -- to see SAAB's last ditch offering in the few ads that appeared here. They put up a sorry telephoto lens pointed straight-on-and-perpendicular photo of the uninspiring side view... on a car sporting a dull as dishwater, flat dark blue paint job. Anyone with even the most elementary concept of how this sort of thing is done had to just look on in utter disbelief. Was there "nobody home" at all as decisions were made? You looked at the car... looked at the price... considered the recent history... and just asked, "Why?" All, so painfully obvious. SAAB, and Swedish honor & prestige, not to mention the technology you cite, most certainly deserved very much better. When it comes to strategic, tactical, or most commercial foreign aircraft, or as esoteric a subject to the provincials here as Scandinavian aerospace, you merely have to consider our more or less one trillion dollar per year "defense" obsession/misdirection, not to mention a "war on terror" on top, to understand a provincial mindset you could characterize as oblivious.

I've never had the experience of an IKEA assembly procedure, though I do have a piece I picked up at a garage sale. I think I get the essential concept. I've just heard the jokes. Not sure if they relate more to IKEA, or to certain flummoxed family engineers. From my ABBA investigations, as well as from some prior knowledge, I realize it was pretty hard not to be running into Nazis somewhere in the general neighborhood, given the fuehrer's wacky obsession with a northern corridor invasion... and the consequence of a 400,000 strong garrison next door. The lingering bitterness and shortsighted perspective was surely tragic in the extreme. Americans just have no meaningful concept of malevolent foreign occupation, or being at the wrong end of "shock and awe"... excepting the example of the Civil War... for some. So risky, half-baked adventurism is an easy sell here.

When it comes to ABBA, as a musician myself, I understand the sensibility, and the meticulous craft and execution underpinning the nearly flawless "pure pop" realizations we hear in those ~100 songs. I grew up on a vibrant and eclectic top forty completely unlike the miserable plague of cynically contrived, monotonous noise that fills the contemporary vacuum. The past twenty years has proven that intelligently and sympathetically conceived pop music was nothing that should have been taken for granted. Or that simple is not at all the same as simplistic, and may take some measure of musical "genius" to pull off convincingly... as so many simple things were only in any sense obvious to the rather brilliant people who first conceived them.

I have not seen the 'Mama Mia' thing. But I fear I'd be put off and disappointed by the nearly inevitable shortcomings of actors playing at singing... knowing and loving as I do the stupendous consistency of Frida's and Agnetha's complete grasp of concept in each song, their flexing of vocal tonalities to suit perfectly, and their very nearly unparalleled flawlessness in phrasing (within the 'rock' era). I have to attribute a lot of that to a group thing -- getting four people (plus supporting musicians) all together on the same page, with relentless attentiveness to critical details and a practical sense of perfectionism, time and time again. Like watching Fred Astaire dance, they made the exceedingly difficult appear effortless. Those conditioned to 'fast food' music, the chronically distracted, the overly image conscious; and, of course, simple dopes... so typically, just don't get it.

It's regrettable and irrational that mere fads can put such accomplishments and such a potential to produce joy out of fashion. These days, it seems like a better sense of balance has been struck regarding both the group and the ABBA body of work. Deeper penetrations of the catalog are easy to explore freely because of YouTube. So much mature excellence was simply missed by so many (including me), it is now clear. I always did admire them for blowing off wads of American dollars to keep themselves grounded as well as could be expected. Regards, Fred