Originally posted by crewl1 I really dislike the feel of the 18-135 for manual focus. It is a great lens and I use it all the time in AF but detest it for manual focus.
Ahhhh - sorry now I understand. Manual focus primary use lenses are different. I LOVE them but not with my K50. The stock focusing screen stinks for manual focus and I still haven't found LiveView to be consistently better than focus confirmation even with focus peaking. Frankly I guess at some future point I need to try one of the split prism focusing screens but the hassles of that setup are enough to keep me from just jumping in feet first.
For great feeling manual focus I'm not sure what current model zooms to recommend. The SDM based DA* lenses have an odd feeling to them when manually focused - the lack of a positive stop at either end is one of the things that makes me a little cool towards using them in full time manual mode. The older FA lenses are so so but I think the K and A series might be your best bet. Best of all they are generally cheaper (not all models) than the equivalent DA/DA* models.