Originally posted by ruoyun.huang thinking of getting a 16-50 or 20-40. SDM failure the biggest fear ... Hope the issue has been fixed?
Any chance we can start another poll in the forum regarding recent purchased lens?
I just wrote a report on my 16-50mm in the lens data base. You may want to look at it before you do anything...and check all the other reports there! The problem is that it is a good all around lens - not a "pro level" lens, but a reasonable fast one with f2.8 and good IQ. The SDM motor seems to have been improved lately (no conformations on this...) but I would be extremely cautious and maybe you want to seriously consider the Tamron 17-50mm as an alternative or any other like the Sigma one, I'm not familiar with them. Anything but that 16-50mm for one specific reason: in case you run into a problem like me, you're finished,
you will not get any sympathy from Pentax... You spent big bucks for a dud and you are stuck with it, using it in manual or as a screw drive, because nobody will ever buy it from you. I may point out also that its not only the SDM... it's the hardware: gears, lens supports, everything in that lens has gone wrong in mine, at least. Just my 2 cents and I'm not a happy camper after being a Pentax user since 1978.
One last word before I cool off, my 50-135mm packed it in too, the SDM was changed as well as "lens carriage system" or whatever...$485 to fix. So here we go again...!!!
Actually, I'm discovering the beauty of my old Takumars. In fact, I don't need those fancy lenses and I'm getting back into the old "hyperfocal settings" that are still valid today... without loosing out in any assignments. GO MANUAL...